Mister Rainbow Unicorn

Meet my new friend, Mister Ru. He’s a stuffed animal. I don’t particularly like stuffed animals, but someone gave him to me and I like free stuff. So Mister Ru is okay with me. And as K’s Choice hits it: everything’s alright, stuffed animals are always right.

Because I’m crazy and shit and school’s over and I feel inspired, here’s a little interview with the one and only Mister Ru.

Me: do you like the name I gave you, Mister Rainbow Unicorn?

Mr Ru: no you fucking shit don’t you see I’m a dog? If you wanted a rainbow unicorn you should have tole the person who bought me!

Me: well how could I have guessed someone’s giving me a stuffed toy? The last time was like, five years ago dude.

Mr Ru: shut up. I don’t like the name because it makes me sound confused with my identity. I know you want to sound cute by naming me cute, but come on. Rainbow unicorn what the fuck!

Me: well do you want to be named Mister Fluffy? Mister Doggy? Mister Peepee? Mister…

Mister Ru: next question, bitch.

Me: okay. why do you sound so nasty?

Mr Ru: because I am a being born of air and light and existentialism. I have a big ego and being cute is not helping. I can get away with anything I want to say, because I am me and I am invincible.

Me: hmkay. Do you watch Super Twins?

Mr Ru: that show? Never seen anything more idiotic since my production date. Do you?

Me: as a matter of fact, I sorta do.

Mr Ru: get a toner and a social life, dear.

Me: what?

Mr Ru: your eye bags are horrible and your skin tone is uneven. In short, you look horrible.

Me: I have never taken any beauty advice from any stupid stuffed animal.

Mr Ru: well missy now you are.

Me: oh what’s the worse thing you can do to me you dumb fuck?!

Mr Ru: I can tell everyone about that time you…

Me: You know Hector and Bogart?

Mr Ru: yeah they’re your real dogs.

Me: they eat everything, especially soft stuff, like cloth and stuffing and fake fur.

Mr Ru: …

Me: they never had indigestion.

Mr Ru: if my giver hears anything about this…!

Me: then your giver will just smile at me and get beaten in thumb wrestling. Which would be, great.

Mr Ru: you’re boring AND pathetic. Get a life.

Me: I will, as soon as I remove that smug smile from your cloth lips.

Mr Ru: fuck off.

Me: (lame) you too.

Beyond Tied Tongues and Euphemisms

I think there's something sad about stars. They are basically small pinpricks of light that traveled thousands and thousands of years for us puny Earthmen to admire on clear, humid nights. The stars are, from our point of observation, just a few centimeters apart. But in reality, they are lightyears from each other, and lonely. As far as we are concerned, they are brilliant and awe-inspiring. But what about them? How might their massive nuclei hearts feel as they grow old and die---alone? Immortality, even just a few millenia of it, exacts a savage price. The price of detachment, and stubborn fatalism.

I don't look at stars too often. They're covered by the roofs and trees of the subdivision I live in, and in Manila they are covered by the city lights and the smog. They say witnessing another's misery is comforting. I don't know, it doesn't work now. And why bother looking at stars when we are like stars already in our own unfortunate right?

And so we are like stars. Near, far, and lonely. We are beyond tied tongues and euphemisms now. We're running out of time. But I do not regret anything, I am not sorry for anything, and I do not hate or blame anyone for anything. This is just how things go. And because I'm so smart, I know how they would end.

Horribly.

Squished!

I have nothing against fat people, but I have something against fat people who sit beside me on buses with especially narrow seats. Like this afternoon. The heat was suffocating already, but after this humongous man sat beside me, space and air became a thoroughly serious problem.

I mean, I know I'm quite petite and I am really a logical choice for fat people to sit beside with. But I can take it if it happens, at the most, once a week. But the last time I came home from Manila (last Saturday) another fatty sat beside me! And it's the Cavite bus with the narrowest seat ever. Shit. I'm supposed to be used to it by now, but is it just me, or the cosmos are conspiring against my petite little curly self?

So karma. Maybe this is karma. Good enough explanation, since I have been a not-so-nice girl lately. Well okay shut up I'm not-so-nice usually, but the intensity has increased along with the heat. Karma, okay, I can take that. But please please not more than once a week!


Me, distressed, to say the very least.

Offspring of the Tofu

There are plenty of the books lying around the floor of my room (duh, what is new?). I spot titles like Conan and the Amazon, The Once and Future King, School of Hard Knocks and Clan of Cave Bear. It suddenly strikes me that they are diverse. Too diverse? Is there such a thing as too diverse, and if there is, is it something to be proud of?

I picked up a dusty, random book. Beloved, by Tony Morrison. One of the books I place under the ‘disturbing’ category, aha. I remember Richard Bach saying that opening any page of a book, any book, would tell you what you need to hear. Give you advice even. Here goes shit:

Page 255, second paragraph: she said she was always a little scared of my daddy. He was too good, she said. From the beginning she said, he was too good for the world. Scared her.

Page 172, first paragraph: …fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like.

Page 173, first paragraph: It’s better here, but I’m not.

I say, by all means, tofu is good for a person’s body. It has lots of healthy stuff in it which I shall name once I find my elementary PEHM book. Lots of healthy stuff really, but if you deep fry it and eat it with liberal amounts of soy sauce, I think the benefits may cancel out with too much salt and cholesterol.

I’m a fan of salty foods. Thus, I can’t live without patis or toyo complementing my meal unless absolutely unavoidable (read: Italian or American restaurants). I put patis in mechado, kaldereta, ginisang munggo, sinigang, menudo, omelettes, corned beef, etc. Toyo plays a lesser role, but it’s more available when I eat out than patis.

The point of all this inane chatter is not this: when someone tells you something then takes it back, and tells it again and takes it back, and so on, you can’t help but believe this thing that is taken back more than you’d (rather) believe the thing not taken back.

Anak ng tokwa, it’s either it is or it isn’t! It can’t be it is and it isn’t, or if it is then it isn’t. You can get yourself into a logic fuck and not get out sane, that way.

Light and dark, Dark and Light

Yeah I dunno what I'm doing here either but keep the giggles to yourself and nobody will get hurt. Understood? What was that...!



Pensive.

The Brilliant Dance

Me: [looks up to the sky, notices dark clouds gathering in the horizon] Ma, it looks like it's gonna rain

Mom: [looks down to the ground, sees the weak raindrops make marks on the cement] it's raining already.


I get dumb like that often. I have a habit of not noticing the obvious. It’s just that when I observe something, the rest of the world falls off without warning. Not good, I know. That’s why I lose 40% of my stuff and never find them.

Being oblivious has it’s up side, though. Zaphod Beeblebrox, this totally froody character from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series has glasses that darken whenever something dangerous happens within his field of vision. That way he doesn’t see anything that might cause him anxiety. Set aside the fact that he might lose his life in the process of not being anxious, but you get the drift. Being oblivious is fun, especially when this thing that you have to notice and feel bad about passes by with minimum negative effects. You feel relaxed, and fine, and healthy. And dumb.

But forget about the dumb part. I can be oblivious to that, too.

So it’s a Sunday. Have I mentioned that I dislike Sundays? With the schedule I have this semester, the days I dislike are Wednesdays and Sundays. They’re the days of the week when I have no classes which equates to not being able to get out of the house. Boring, with a capital G. I have a feeling this wanting-to-get-out-of-the-house thing is a relatively new phenomena, that I use to want to haunt this shiznit rather than see the sun, but I dunno. I don’t remember.

Oh fuck, I so don’t remember a lot of things right now. This slow Sunday afternoon, I feel as if I don’t have a care in the world. I know I should. There are papers to pass, finals to study for. I even remember what they are wow! But they don’t bother me the way they should a typical 19-year old kid experiencing the throes of her last semester as a college sophomore. Stress, bah. That comes later.

Getting Hit and Crossing Streets

I'm not accident-prone, but I've had a few experiences. I remember when I was younger and loved watermelons. I was waiting for my mom in a curb somewhere with the watermelons she brought in the market when one of them rolled towards the road. Me being stupid, I went after it and the moral lesson of this story is: don't go after a watermelon which rolled towards the road.

I get nervous when crossing the street alone. I get more nervous when crossing the street with people walking beside me. I have this belief that while I am not very capable when crossing even on a Ped Xing, the people with me are definitetly dumber and will get me killed along them. Considering how Filipinos are a happy-go-lucky species, they tend to overestimate their lifespan. I get anxious when they overestimate it along mine.

See I'm quite careless. I might have this subconscious belief that I am invincible and lucky (although I tell myself I don't believe in, bah, luck), thus resulting in uncalled-for recklessness. Please do not, I repeat, do not be surprised when you find out poor Liz died in a hit-and-run. I am fairly stupid like that.

The ABC of Questions

A. When you ask a question and you get a ‘yes’ for an answer, and a ‘maybe’ when you ask it again, the real answer is ‘no’. This also goes vice versa. Example: do you like me? Yes. Really now you do? Maybe, I dunno. This is a world of yeses and nos. The grey shades may lie in between, but there is a yes and no, generally. Know how to feel it out; unfortunately this requires a lot of cynicism on your part and a lot of vulnerability on the other person’s.

B. The best way to not answer a question is to ask another question. However, this strategy does not work if the said snotty person knows it’s a strategy. Do it subtly. Shift the conversation to a neutral topic. The best way to do this discretely would be to ask a question regarding something you know is more important to the other person than knowing this important thing about you.

C. Don’t ask a question which you might not want to hear the answer to. Some people are silly enough to destroy their illusions this way. Because you see, some things are better left unsaid and some people do not have the strength to hear them. If you know they’re there in the Other Dimension of Unsaid Slithering Things, and you even unfortunately know what they are, then you know what to do already. Stop being a smartass and stop asking. Being sure is a foolish talent.

Book Season

So yeah, you might have noticed that the posts here for the past month or so characterized a period of intense soul-searching by truly yours. What the fuck did I just say soul-searching? It's nice to know I have a soul to search really, considering how much I care about the afterlife. Which is, nil.

I'm emo in a flat, sarcastic, matter-of-fact sort of way (which is not that much of emo if you ask me). But the recent posts shame me to the tips of my cuticles. You know how the back of your neck tingles and your cheeks heat up whenever you say something you know is embarrassing but has to be said anyway? That's how I've been feeling about the last posts. I say to myself: konti na lang, pagkasabi mo neto hindi mo na kailangang sabihin ulit kahit kanino, kahit sa sarili mo everytime. See, some things have to be let out. Some.

So now I'm closing this dumb chapter of my life and move on to having (humor me!) intelligent conversation with you. School's coming to a close, and I now have time for books. Since this year I think I've only finished one decent book, and considering my track record, that is so pathetic! Pathetic I tell you! Books are my life and love and all that.

So, as per schedule, I am rummaging through my library to reread the best books I have in my collection. Since I am nice and all, I am inviting you to go to my house and rummage with me. I'll lend you anything.

But not The Death of Ivan Illych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoi. Betch has it. Also my Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Andy has it. Also the Wind In the Door by Madeleine L'Engle. Mishee has it. Also not my hardbound Treasury of Science Fiction---Ting has it. You evil, evil people!

The Pokers

We live in strange times.

We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity of infinite recursion and say things like, ‘Oh hi, Ed! Nice tan. How’s Carol?’ involves a great deal of filtering skill for which all conscious entities have eventually to develop a capacity in order to protect themselves from the contemplation of the chaos through which they seethe and tumble. So give your kid a break, OK?

Extract from Practical Parenting in a Fractally Demented Universe

-from Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

Parents are crazy animals. You live with them for nineteen years and for some unfathomable reason, they don’t understand why you are what you are and why you do what you do. Who the funk said that parents are instant psychologists? Psychologist, my ass! They’re just being nosy and know-it-all. Come to think of it, isn’t that what psychologists are paid to do?

Like yesterday morning, I was quietly and happily eating breakfast, making peace with the world, when this conversation ensued:

Mama: Break na kayo ni Geronimo no?
Me: [calmly says to self] My, what a wonderful piece of egg!
Mama: Break na kayo no?
Me: Whee this is fun! For some reason Ma finally remembered to salt the damn thing.
Mama: Break na kayo di ba?
Me: Easy on the rice, luv, you’re sorta gaining again.
Mama: Bakit ba hindi ka sumasagot, break na kayo no?
Me: Fuck, but I want another piece of ham! Where’s the ketchup fer chrissakes?
Mama: [pikon na] Break na kayo!
Me: [finally stops holding crazy convo with self and talks to mother] No comment.
Mama: Sabi ko na nga ba eh, ang showbiz mo naman.
Me: No comment, Ma.
Mama: Sus, sabi na nga ba eh, sa susunod dapat mahal ka talaga! Ang dali mo kasing makuha eh.
Me: [highly annoyed] Ma pwede ba wag kang magsalita ng ganyan, hindi mo alam kung anong sinasabi mo! Wag ka na lang mag-komento.

This ruined my morning. Why does she have to say insensitive things like that? There are so many other things she can tell me, so many other ways to poke. But she just has to find the one sore side, eh? The sorest side.

But I can sortof understand why she did that. Lately we haven’t been talking much, because as we all know, February-March are the hell months for those who find themselves unfortunately still in school. I’ve been busy, not only with school, but in other ehem aspects of my rather boring life. But. I still didn’t deserve that. Or did I?

Now I was supposed to write a long rant regarding parents and their eccentricities, but for some reason I lost interest. I’m a forgiving sort of person really. After breakfast.

Fascinating Fact, My Ass

For some reason, I was really interested in food yesterday. Yes, I’m the sort of person who can choose to be interested or not in food. Food to me, lately, is just about as attractive as a doorknob: you wouldn’t mind too much if it’s not around, but you need it anyway. But yesterday I was all for eating.

So during lunch I went to my favorite stall in the cafeteria (closely contested by the stall behind it which sells Corn Bits Special) and was happily surprised that besides pancit palabok, lomi, arroz caldo, spaghetti, siomai and carbonara they are now selling (drum roll please) macaroni salad! I ordered a plate, along with some siomai. I am very fascinated by the fact that I am the only person I know who eats siomai and macaroni salad at the same time---in alternate mouthfuls, at that.

Truth be told, paper tastes better than their so-called macaroni salad. When I mentioned this to Betch, she was very surprised because to her I looked like I was having the time of my life consuming it. Rolls eyes.

After lunch, I went to an internet café along Taft. When I came out, I spotted calamares and immediately honed. Have you tasted this shit? Not the clean sort, but the filthy kind. All the dustified boogers, spit and vehicle exhaust add to the delicate flavor of flour-coated squid sold for three bucks a pop. Fascinating fact for this paragraph: with my penchant for street food, it is highly amazing that I haven’t yet gotten typhoid. Yet. I feel guilty sometimes and lose sleep over it but hey, street food has interesting ingredients as mentioned above.

I walked back to school and saw a cotton candy thingy parked in front of the gate. These pink gunk sell for five pesos and if you’re adventurous, you can request Manong Cotton Candy to put some powdered ‘milk’ into the pink gunk. ‘Milk’ in quotes because the powdered mixture is 3/4s flour and 1/4s milk. Talk about cost-cutting. Anyway I bought some.

I was looking for Mary and Mishee so I wandered all over campus. Imagine a girl in a red-and-white candy-striped shirt with pink ribbon in her hair clutching a bag of fake-ish cotton candy with a lost, blank expression on her face. Yea, that’s me. After ten years I received a message telling me that they’re at Sushi-ya, like, five thousand point sixty-seven miles away from where I was looking for them! D’oh. To assuage my feelings I bought orange juice and was pissed off enough to dip cotton candy in the juice and eat it. I swear, try it. It tastes greater than great.

Contentedly walking along Faura, I saw more food. A camote-que stall caught my eye and I did a double take: I want camote-que! I was staring at it with all the desire I can muster, trying to forget that camote has tons of carbs and will make me fat. Stare. Stare. Then besides a waiting shed, I saw a girl giving this guy a pedicure. My eyes strayed to his feet. A toe was a bit bloody from the nipper and looked like the ugliest thing I ever saw in my entire life. It was hairy and dark and dirty.

I shuffled to Rob Manila and moved on with my life, sans appetite.

What the Hell Is Love

He was not so tall and rather fat
Had a Labrador and a limping cat
Bored in the city with a broken heart
Had enough money and a credit card

..what the hell is friendship
He must have turned it off
And most of all he wondered
What the hell is love?

Have I said here that I love K’s Choice? The only songs I’ve been downloading lately are theirs. So far I have thirty, out of how many I don’t know what. This band is old. I don’t think they’re still in circulation, but their songs are powerful enough from the past to touch me.

My current favorites: ‘If You’re Not Scared’, ‘Wait’, ‘Until I’m Fine’ and ‘Busy’. They’re far from deep. But I like them because together they play what I’m feeling at the moment. And that is sleepless and horrible.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that my life is in the dustbin or the toilet lately, and to be fair to myself, I’d say it’s far from it. I’m supposed to be enjoying the things happening right now, and I guess I am. ‘Fun’ is not enough to describe the wonderful things that have been up lately. After all, I got 1.75 for the final exam in bowling (Betch please eat that and stop hankering about Math 11). S’all good.

And so why am I sleepless and feeling horrible tonight? I hate paradoxes only when they apply to me. Otherwise they’re cool. But now they’re not and this paradox makes me lose sleep, and the paradox itself is that I am happy but I feel horrible. You know what, I’m going down in front of me. Now if you don’t know an emo line when you see one, go to hell.

What the hell is love? I took it seriously overmuch. Next time I’ll be suspicious. And next time I’ll probably eat those words but what the fucking burning hell I’ve been eating too many words lately and I’m suffering from a bad case of indigestion. Screw you. Screw me. This is how I pay for being too sure about everything, for being too right in some things, and for being too concerned about nothing important.

So what the hell is love?

I don’t want to know again.

An Unholy Light

Have you ever been stared at by a male with a stare that by all designs and purposes is one of naked desire? Have you gotten that weird feeling of ‘um okay, er, eww’? I suddenly remember Paz Latorena’s short story, Desire. It’s about a homely woman with a perfect, hot body that all men leer at, making her incapable of being loved. It’s one of the saddest stories I know. Read it if you come by it.

I say, if looks could kill, two people might have been murdered last night.

The Saddest Girl I Know

“Anong kurso mo?”
“Political Science po”
“O? Eh di magiging pulitiko ka?”
“Hindi naman ho.”
“Mag-law?”
“Siguro po, kung hindi ako tamarin. Pero parang malabo.”
“Eh di anong balak mo pagka-gradweyt mo?”
“Gusto ko po sanang pumasok sa advertising.”
“…”

How many times have I gotten into this conversation? I’ve had it with anyone who got around to asking what my course is. It’s so standardized, I can fire off no-maybe-advertising without having to wait for their next question. So why advertising? And if I want to get into it, why am I not shifting to a more appropriate course?

I find advertising unbelievably fascinating. I find selling happiness unbelievably fascinating. To do so, you have to have the knack for knowing the mentalities, motivations, and irrationalities of a whole culture. There are many, many definitions of happiness, yet advertising can narrow it down to sell a bar of detergent or pancit canton. How hot is that?

Political science and advertising are not so different from each other. Political science does not only cover governments and institutions; it enfolds the whys and wherefores of human interaction within or through governments and institutions. If successful advertising involves knowledge of mentalities, motivations and irrationalities of a whole lump of people, then political science is a tool to achieve it.

On a totally maybe unrelated matter: I need a summer job, badly. I care fuck about the money. I need to have a valid enough reason to get out of this house everyday, and if it involves me slaving my ass off at some call center and depending on frappes for my mental health, I swear to gods I would. I’m very restless in school lately. What if I have to live with it at home for the next two months? Fucking shiznit.

Of course I’ll probably get lazy to go through the whole job hunting and application process, but who knows. There may be other desperate reasons to want a decent office job. Oh and there are. But the knowledge is of no use to you because I know it is of no use to me.