Diatribes: Grey Matter vs. Glenn Cruz

Do you get one of those days when nothing really comes out right? I've had a few. Can't remember exactly when they happened, but I feel that they did happen. The human mind - at least mine - can be frustrating sometimes... just can't remember everything, cull them out from dusty bookshelves of memory on demand, or for a better analogy, scan backups with a few bits of search criteria, select then download. What's even more frustrating is when you get to remember things from the past at the most unexpected of times, or when you'd rather just forget. But I digress. Today nothing came out right. I was supposed to attend a workshop; I misplaced the advisory letter, had to search for it, only finding out that because of this pawing through seemingly a ream's worth of fax letters, the friggin' letter announced I was already late for the workshop. Then of course, there was a pre-workshop homework to be done (some questionnaire to be filled up for the UNGASS report). I opened my inbox to finally check it out... wow, ang hirap ng tinatanong, major data crunching! I remembered as I read this e-mail containing the questionnaires that I've skimmed through it days earlier; it made my head hurt then, and it surely made my head hurt now. Long story short, first task of the day? Dedma. Then there's this peer educator in Lucena who is doing his thesis in college. He really sounded desperate on text. Several text messages since last night. I helped him come up with his topic at the start. And I swore to help him through... but I knew I should be busy today with my own stuff at work... I couldn't help but help him out... it took me the whole day thinking about his concerns. Darn! Even if I tried, the thesis wouldn't leave me. I dunno, but this is the fourth time I'm helping out "kids" with their theses. I dunno, maybe I just know better now how to do it right... maybe I'm just atoning for treating my own thesis like crap... well, it really was crap. Then there's this cellphone line application at Smart Wireless. I need to get one for official purposes at the Lucena office. They were raking in quite a profit for PLDT with all those landline-to-cellphone call charges! I researched the Smart website for info, which was essentially nil. I called the sales hotline, which I thought was very informative until later. Then I went to the business center, armed with all of what I thought were the proper documents needed, per hotline advice. Well? You guessed it, more unpleasant surprises! Turns out my document for proof of financial whatever (stability?) wasn't enough... I brought my credit card bill as proof. And being the struggling lower B-classed citizen, my financial capacity proof was zilch. Turns out I needed to have like available credit worth 50% of my total credit allowance. I'm a revolver, so you know, I just pay my minimum due, consistency and perseverance not worth the virtue. Vipers! My mind was screaming, while trying to keep my cool, probably as tribute na rin to our country's recent Miss International gain (I personally knew her way, way back my "racket" days). Then there's the thing with the manual typewriter. I needed to buy one for the office... and I saw a good deal at Abensons for a portable Olympia, three-k-plus-plus. Just saw it last Sunday, would you believe it, the salesperson just said the last unit was sold just a few hours ago... grrrrrr!!! But I can place an order daw and they can get it for me... hay salamat, in fairness! To be delivered in three to five days - "next Tuesday" - ha?? Next Tuesday is already a week - "Sir, hindi po counted ang Saturday at Sunday." More inis! I needed that typewriter because of some flukey at SEC, where I'm trying to get our new incorporation papers accepted. SEC had this uber-convenient online application, where they just ask for the info to be pasted on template forms, then voila! PDF files of Articles of Incorporation, SEC Registration and By-Laws... instant Lucky-Me Soww-tanghon! Some schoolmarmy examiner informed us that our info were not enough... but that's what their online processing system coughed up di ba naman... "hindi pa kasi perfect yung system eh, kaya nga may examiners..." Ay juice ko! Easy lang naman daw, just type over the additional info needed. "Don't worry, mabilis na yan..." Don't blame me for not believing ha. And now, I first intended to write some nice things I experienced while I was doing our "roadshow" of the project sites. Now my mind, it's playing hide-and-seek with me, nice tidbits of anecdotes in tow. It's telling me, purge, purge, purge... I've to blog my frustrations for purging. So I apologize for indigestions this entry may cause. "Don't worry, mabilis na yan..." Ang alin?! Inis pa rin ako...

For lite blogging, a blogthing...

How You Are In Love

You take a while to fall in love with someone. Trust takes time. You tend to give more than take in relationships. You need your space and privacy. You don't like to be smothered. You love your partner unconditionally and don't try to make them change. You stay in love for a long time, even if you aren't loved back. When you fall, you fall hard.

How Are You In Love?

The schlong and the schlort

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Acid bath spells end of the world

Discovered a cool site today -- http://www.fark.com -- if you're like me on the Internet, ceaselessly in search of weird, funny stuff, this one site helps you lay off a bit on the search engines... this Drew Curtis guy would do it for you.

This article would scare your pants off... it's even on Yahoo! News (duh, what does that mean, Yahoo! is authoritative??)... until of course you realize it's a news content service from Weekly World News. What? Don't know what Weekly World News is? You should go and get groceries for mom more often... he he he

The headline: "PLANET-DISSOLVING DUST CLOUD IS HEADED TOWARD EARTH!" The exclamation point and the all caps should be a dead giveaway: tabloid ito, my dear friends. The lead: "Scared-stiff astronomers have detected a mysterious mass they've dubbed a 'chaos cloud' that dissolves everything in its path, including comets, asteroids, planets and entire stars -- and it's headed directly toward Earth!"

Usual trappings -- citations of use of some high-tech stuff ("NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory"), theoretical mumbo-jumbo ("Hawking Radiation," "electron-positron pair"), and of course, the quotes! Scientists galore! And here's the penultimate punchline: "Some scientists say mankind's best hope would be to build a 'space ark' and hightail it to the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.1 million light-years away." Right. Now, that is high tech science, di ba naman?! At siyempre pa, in true Men in Black/Conspiracy Theory fashion, this was what the US government said: "This is a lot like global warming, where the jury is still out on whether it's real or not. The existence of this so called chaos cloud is only a theory. Americans shouldn't panic until all the facts are in." Even in jest, the political characterizations are still in -- and I think Weekly World News is British.

Oh alam n'yo na: boys, girls, baklas and tomboys, calendar this down: "...the swirling, 10 million-mile-wide cosmic dust cloud has been likened to an 'acid nebula' and is hurtling toward us at close to the speed of light -- making its estimated time of arrival 9:15 a.m. EDT on June 1, 2014." Okay, bring out your biology textbooks, let's start reviewing and pairing the species -- teka, paano na lang ang mga asexuals, hermaphrodites, and uh, what do you call those animals that change sex depending on the weather (or is it water)? O di ba, Noah had an heterosexist god.

For the cineastes, better watch out for some silly storyline like this coming in theaters soon... I could predict at least a B-movie grade or a "summer Hollywood blockbuster" pitch would... teka muna, it's been some time, better check out http://www.chud.com na rin... laterz, peeps!

Someone, boost my confidence puh-leez

Just in the nick of time. I had to submit a project proposal today, deadest deadline, 5:00PM, and was able to submit it 4:30PM. For days now, I've been struggling with it. Why couldn't I write when I really needed the skill? Kainis, it's like one of life's cruelest jokes. I was in my puta-writer mode for days, sleeping for most of the day time and wide, wide awake with so many ideas I couldn't even string together cohesively at night. In the early afternoons, when I usually have time to think over and write, nothing came. Just more addiction to the 'Net... staring at a blank MSWord document, then the browser icons just there on the taskbar tempting me "c'mon, you know the URL -- w-w-w-dot-" -- ay kainis talaga! After submission, just after the initial euphoria (usually attributed to beating-the-odds college students with bad study habits), I read my receiving copy, ay jusko, kakahiya, ang daming typo errors. I was feeling all fidgety, while successfully wolfing down a double patty, bacon mushroom melt... then much later, actually, right now, this very moment, I begin to doubt, was it the typo? Could I really be such a nerd to be bothered so much with mere typos?? Or maybe, I'm a different kind of nerd. While having late dinner of sinigang, rice and sprite (yes, trying to maintain just one cup of rice), an evil thought came to me: "you know, you've never really succeeded in getting approved your own damn proposals..." That's not true, I defended, there was Positive Learning, then Positive Lives II... "Oh yeah, Positive Learning, the one you never gotten paid? Positive Lives II?? Jeezus, they asked you to fill in a matrix of blanks... and in both cases, the funders were desperate to get rid of their money..." I could see myself being verbally battered by an evil nemesis-version, I crouching, no! no! no! *cover ears* la-la-la-la... Evil-me is pushing it: "Remember Pan Asia? Remember how much time and effort you put on that one? Remember almost cursing that name? Naaaan-diii-thaaa..." Stop it! "How about the TS/TG sex worker proposal? Wasn't that the first of many??" Stop it! I got the GFATM -- that's our biggest project, that's MY biggest project! "Are you sure it's really yours??" All these things were happening -- but just inside my mind... arghh! If you could have seen me that time, blank faced, a bit bored looking, glassy eyed, legs doing that jog allegedly associated with unconscious masturbation. You wouldn't have guessed the war that was tearing me inside. Maybe a blog confession could help... hmmm, let's try... so here I am -- and I'm stopping now, gotta check if it worked...

Real, hard issues -- I'm stirred profoundly

Aug. 17th, 2005 01:17 am - HOMOPHOBIA IS WRONG

I AM ONE OF THE MANY.

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn't have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

Repost this if you believe homophobia is wrong

(Found on this site -- http://www.livejournal.com/users/mosscake/)

From my e-mail: State of UP Education

Doing what this blog was intended in the first place: to "clip" out things that pass my way in the Internet... this one I found from our UP Baguio Yahoo! Group... I had my freshman year there, which included an unexpected vacation after July 16, 1990... Message: article from the Philippine Comedian (annual spoof of the Phiippine Collegian (yung jaryo ng peyups) It's so hirap talaga to study in UP, the University of the Poor. You know, I never wanted to study here.But my parents kasi, they both went to UP andthey said na it was the best school talaga. Eh 'di I went. But no! When I got here, Holy horrors! I was ready to make himatay after the first day pa lang. Would you believe, there's no aircon na nga in the classrooms, the fan doesn't work pa. And then this guy who was like, wearing a sando, shorts and tsinelas lang made tabi next to me. He made pakilala pa! The nerve! So I made takbo to the CR to make tago. But I couldn't make hugas my hands that were so pawis from escaping such a near-death experience. There was no liquid soap! Not even a couch where I could sit to make kikay. Do you feel my pain na ba? But wait, there's more. Last Thursday kasi Daddy's Volvo was bawal, ehthe Eclipse was being repaired, so I had to make sakay with my yaya in the Ikot jeep. It was so siksik! I could like, smell the putok of the girl next to me. Like, it was sobrang mabaho talaga. Kasi naman, the Ikot jeeps are old na nga, they're mainit pa! Sana they make palit na the jeeps with a shuttle system. Okey lang naman even if there's an increase in pamasahe di ba? So when the car is bawal, I can use my credit card na to make bayad. Isa pa, you know the Shopping Center? It's so kadiri talaga. I'm forced na nga to make Xerox there, (as if naman I would be caught in that place otherwise) pero I'm so inis because it's so madilim and maliit, and most of the stalls don't have aircon. They should tear it down na and build a mall na lang.Then I wouldn't have to go to Katipunan pa to get my Starbucks fix. My gosh, this place is so bulok I don't know nga why anyone would bother making turo here pa. Just yesterday, my professor was kinda inis kasi her whiteboard marker had no more tinta! Then she tried to make hanap a matino whiteboard marker but of course there was none. Duh! Kasi naman if we had laptops instead of desks in every classroom there would be no more need for whiteboards di ba? But you know even if there were laptops na, the seats are so tigas sometimes I find it mahirap to concentrate. Dapat may cushioning para malambot sa butt, like Downy. Now I'm in my fourth year na. I don't want to stay in this place anymore. I don't give a paki if UP's the best university here. I'm going to transfer to LaSalle, where the CRs have liquid soap. Now na.

Exploration continues...

Just a quick application of yet another curiosity in this blogging thingie -- hey, how appropriate, this "thingie" actually comes from a site called BLOGTHINGS.

Your Blogging Type Is Thoughtful and Considerate

You're a well liked, though underrated, blogger. You have a heart of gold, and are likely to blog for a cause. You're a peaceful blogger - no drama for you! A good listener and friend, you tend to leave thoughtful comments for others.

What's Your Blogging Personality?

Getting some happy 80's feeling

Oh look! A third blogpost... I hope this won't become an addiction, but I hope this won't be ningas cogon either. Then again, I'd expect myself to be really quite diligent at first -- getting the hang of it, baga. Today, I try the mail-to-blog feature -- the wysiwig interface isn't quite working fast enough for my thoughts.

For a change, I'm happy with my last song syndrome... Absolute Reality by Alarm, heard over Powerbooks in Megamall while digging into the discounted books rack. The music reminded me of positive memories of bygone youthful, worry-free days. Positive must be qualified though: even those creepy, juvenile, embarrassing situations back in high school are just now plain corny and naive, good for chuckle. Kasi naman di ba, compared to tribulations of my thirtysomething life, walang wala ang mga yun talaga (couldn't even remember why some of those "bad moments" were worth the anxiety).

Absolute Reality is one of those songs that really trigger back those feel-good vibes... struggling with a complete, sane set of volleyball with classmates (wasn't much of a sportie)... fussing over hair, zits, cheekbones, shoulders... practicing cool, disaffected moves for classroom-to-corridor-to-canteen seeing and being seen... accessories, accessories, accessories... of course, laughing with friends as sun went down and bus services giving up waiting...

Then ang mga nakakahiyang mga kakornihan: fighting with my gay English teacher for getting overly dramatic on us because we were noisy and disrespectful (we're friends now, and we used to see each other as usual suspects in usual Malate hangouts, until the teacher brain-drain thanks to the US)... moping over feeling used and left out after helping classmates as "bridge" (alam nyo na yun, being the funny, friendly, sexless guy who's everybody's friend -- and access to the coolest girls and hottest guys)... getting all hurt and anti-social after being chided to try courting some girl, only to be treated like a joke... hay jusko, kinikilabutan ako... and oh, of course, getting physical and violent and hurting and regretful -- and being taunted for "hitting like a girl." These were the REAL ISSUES of my "spirited" youth.

Then just like now, I will feel all misty, somewhat saddened... some classmates died, some had unwanted pregnancies, some had more than his share of panganays, several single parents, some lost and forever pining for their love of their lives (lost to college and career)... and some finally came out of the closet, started living for real, trying hard not to look back in regret and focus on the now, and hope for better things in the future... haaaayyy buuuhhaaay... mine's not too bad though -- I think -- loving devotedly (and loved back I'm sure) for more than five years, not that rich but getting by, respected for my talents... and the last song syndrome revives me again...

"Hoooohhh, yeah, yeah... hey now, now... hey now, now..." (hey, and I don't sing too bad, either)

My first and last post -- July 23, 2003 -- I said I was about to start with something new in my life. And here's my second posting, more than two years after... I'm pathetic! Actually, due to circumstances that would probably unfold little by little if I persevere this time around, I've essentially forgotten that I've started this blog. Regaining consciousness of this itty-bitty space on the Internet began early this year... including all anxieties that came with the "should I/shouldn't I" a.k.a. konsensya/kontra-konsensya mind-fuck debate-a-thon. A dear, dear friend graduates college; him having nothing to do on the interim, he got dragged to some activities that I manage at work. With the mini rackets he was getting from me, he literally lived with me for awhile. I saw him being quite prolific with the blogging thing. A slight tinge of envy; how does he do it? Then later on, finding out that my hunny (term of endearment for my "mate") also maintains one and is also quite the blogger. "Bakit hindi ko alam yan?" "blah-blah... and you won't understand these things anyway..." "Ganun?" (Isyu! Isyu!) Then finally, braving a visit to my blogger account -- spotless, spiritless, thoughtless -- like a clean room with a "dirty secret," a closet full of incomprehensible junk. Fast foward months later, on the verge of another burnout, feeling emotionally exhausted with work-related issues, discovered an addictive pill -- G4M. Edit profile, bluetooth images from mobile phone, tweak images with Photoshop, upload images, search, search, search (hottie, buddy, hottie, hottie, SUPER-ULTRA-MEGA hottie, *swoon!*)... day in, day out. Then a witty, funny guy on the boards (a hottie also in my book), cites his blog for his sexcapades... shameless self-promoting ploy, it's a blog of his day-to-days with a twist, stupendous volumes of wit and humor. He has found a fan in me. Promised him, as feedback, to build a fans club for him. He he he. Then just tonight, on the comp darth sanro visits the blog of a friend from his former office. Also my friend, and I miss her TERRIBLY (missing you, astrobrat, and it really hurts, promise). Darth sanro shows me one of the linked blogs -- an ultra sports guy/artist/and yes, prolific blogger. "Hey! That's a guy on one of my buddy lists! (friendster? DL? can't remember)" Hmmm... I do remember he doesn't have anything much on his profile linked on my buddy list... I also do remember having averred to another friend that his profile is not your usual "hottie posing/packaging" (I need a better word for this!) but there's something definitely incredibly sexy about him -- after looking over his blog, I knew what it was finally, his brain. And because of these precedents, and due to the fact that I'm your ordinary human specimen, thinking but not quite rational, I've made a decision to at least try again to revive this blog. If my next entry will again be two years after, at least, I'd already sense a pattern -- a pathetic one, at that. And I'm supposed to be the one of the "real writers" among my friends! Sheesh!