Don't tell anyone this, but when I was a child, I used to watch "The Little Mermaid" four times a day. On Betamax. I know every line ever said. I know every song. And every hidden Mickey. I bought the merchandise. The Little Mermaid Barbie doll. The stuffed toy flounder. The rubber Sebastian. I still have The Little Mermaid comforter and bed sheets. I use them occasionally, when no one's looking, and secretly pretend I'm swimming with dolphins.

When my friends came over, I'd make them watch with me too. I'd slap them stupid if they said they didn't want to watch the movie again. I'd make them wait till our little silver Betamax machine stopped whirring and whining so I could play the whole thing again. Hanna ended up hating mermaids. And she'd flip out when she'd see yellow and blue-striped fat fish.

But look, 12 years later, and looky here, I still love it. And seeing this, I just loved it more.

The reason why I keep on going on at this rate is because I believe I can accomplish everything.

EVERYTHING.

If I try really really REEEALLLY hard. Take for example, my schedule this semester. I'm graduating, at nine kick-ass units, with two subjects that might as well not count. I have a Marine Science class which is all about us building relationships and a Biology class that is all about poison.

I crammed a thesis proposal this weekend, for 36 hours straight (sort of. nevertheless it took me three days to do something I should have done in a sem), with an ailing urethra and an overly dramatic fanboy soon-to-be-boyfriend. It was because of a cumulative series of crappy research training and wrong turns. Enough said.


I have two (plus one secret one) orgs that I attend to, all of which involve a countless amount of transcription, letter writing, addressing, sealing, delivering, follow-upping, media liasoning (say it with me. In french. Media LI-AY-SAUGH.), building relationships (oh, Prof. Marine Science will be SO PROUD) and various other tasks that require 2.4 hours of my time in blocks. Then meetings in the afternoons-to-evenings and a crappy-ass commute home.

Oh. And there's the fanboy to attend to and constantly assure. It is by far the most objective, honest, brutal relationship I have ever been involved in. He thinks of feelings in pie charts and the development of feelings as ladderized promotions. (Do you love me na? How bout now? Now? When's my next promotion? What tasks must I accomplish?) It's quite endearing I assure you.

In a society beset by problems, and with various societal issues requiring your attention and the attention of others, I suppose this is what it should feel like to be involved. In the grandest sense of the term.

And so we soldier on, going about it as meaningfully as we can without being lost in the motions. (Repeat after me: WE ARE NOT MACHINES!!!!!)

Then when I am curled up into a tight little ball at night, staring at the ceiling, trying to slow down my pulse rate and checking my vital signs, being so tired all the time and wound up that I can't ever relax my shoulders anymore, I think, is this how it's going to be for the rest of my life?


. . . Yeah. It will be.

So there's everything to accomplish on my perpetually growing task list, and I am left with four words my brother says to me every day when he gets to see me under the mound of paperwork.

YOU ARE STRESS PERSONIFIED.

On today's issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer,

I present you with my friend and slate-mate and org-mate and kasama sa pagkilos at paglaban....


BANG NA BANG SA CENTENNIAL.

heheheh.

but we should pay more attention to what they're holding. Thousands, (millions?) missing. Jonas, Karen, She, students, journalists, political leaders, farmers. Fathers, brothers, sisters, children, friends.

Military continues to deny damning evidence that they, by the auspices of this paranoid and power-hungry regime, are behind these.

What will the new army chief of staff do? What will we do? We will fight. And lobby. And demand. And struggle.

Back to school na, people! Summer campaigns over. Tuloy pa rin pakikibaka!

I do not believe in long- lasting feelings or promises that end in "forever."

No emotion can be strong enough or sustained enough to last a frickin lifetime.

Because, people have an attention span of less than 20 minutes.

Waiting for the onslaught to end. Fizzle fizzle fizzlin' out.

After the Jun Lozada forum, Mico, Yas, and I sat staring at the sky (and my favorite hangout, the one, the only Main Library), waiting for the rally to DAR. Romantic Sunken Garden if not for the (or more so because of) the shirtless soccer players.

Then I thought holy hell, I'm never going to have the time to sit and lounge on the grass at this school on an afternoon like this with these people ever ever again.

Shit makes me not want to graduate yet.

I was asked recently what my ideal guy was.

I haven't actually given that much thought, save for this maniacal insistence on the highly improbable but ever dream-worthy "artist-musician-athlete."

I guess everyone could pinpoint certain qualities they tend to like in their ideal person, but they're all very general and could encompass 70 million people with the same personality traits. Like, being tall. Or having a dry sense of humor. Or being clean and well-groomed. Or ambitious. Or family oriented.

Maybe because if you narrow it down too much, like asking for a man with two moles on his left aorta, you'd be effectively making your chances slim.

The bare minimum, that I always always ask is that they spell right.

I know it's elitist to assume everyone has had access to literacy like few of us have (comparatively), and I can't say why, but it's always been my pet peeve when guys talk to you (via cellphone) and they can't spell right.

It's been a theme in my life, though, and has since made me question the feasibility of this standard.

The first boy who ever wrote me a love letter was a neighbor.

He'd sit on their wall, which had a good view of our bathroom, and would wait for me to brush my teeth so he could say "pssssssst!" at me. I wouldn't turn around to face the small window, lest I see a gnome, but on the ninth day of stalking, I woke up one morning to find he'd left a branch of pink orchids on the bathroom's window sill and a letter, written in his chicken-shit scrawl declaring his admiration. The contents are inane, but I remember clearly that he began his letter with, "Dear Missss" and ended it with, "Sige, I have to go now kailangan ko pa ayusin comp-puter namin."

My first boyfriend, during one of our epic quarrels, told me to fuck myself, and I told him curtly that I will not stand for such language. He said, via text, "Sorry. Na-frostate lang talaga ako."

Another, who explained why he didn't call on my birthday, "The network was down. I was seriously trying to cuntact costumer [costumes pare.] services."

I mean, yes, I've misspelled a number of times like "weird" and "wierd." But I always wanted someone who could at least pretend to consult a dictionary when they aren't sure what to say. Maybe 'cause spelling right is a sign of being well-read, and I like wide readers. Or that being a writer, it's permanently drilled in your mind to copy-read everything that comes across your field of vision.

But so far, no grammatical genius yet.

It's so frostating.

All parents have a love story, surely.

even if it's hard to imagine them being young. and lustful. . . *shudder*

I asked mom about hers on mother's day in keeping up with celebrating her being our mother and how she came to be so.

And here's how it goes.

Mom was 21. She was working as a teller in a bank. She had three best friends whom she went out partying and drinking with all the time. She was, at the moment, two-timing her long-time boyfriend of seven years, Johnny. Specifically, she was dating their finance supervisor on the side. Because, she explained, the dude gave kick-ass presents. And two, Johnny was working at a diamond factory in Israel, far from reach and sight. So Mom figured to find a replacement in the meantime.

Then she met my Dad. The details are hazy. Something about meeting at a bar in Manila, and my Dad pursuing my Mom quite persistently. Dad, fresh from military school, was gaunt, and really, really dark. A far cry from the handsome and strapping young men swinging by her bank and wooing her. My Dad was also dating somebody else. I don't know what drugs my parents were on. But my Dad kept note of where she went to work. She went back home.

Months passed.

My Mom had, by this time, broken up with her boy. Johnny. I'm not sure about the finance supervisor.

One bright, sunny day my Dad decides to waltz past Mom's bank’s great wide windows in tennis gear. Something about him appealed to my Mom. The way she described him to me, I had an image of a young pre-surgery Michael Jackson in my head, with a shock of curly (curly??!) dark hair, white headbands, high starched kneesocks, and white hookah shorts. The kind that gives you wedgies when you strain with effort. She was so smitten, that when my Dad walked in the bank and invited her and the girls out for drinks with him and his buddies, she readily accepted, all flushed and excited.

Clad in her best gear, she and her girlfriends went to the Halfway House at Camp John Hay that evening, and waited for the boys to come in. She understood the invite to be a hepta-quadruple date, with her girlfriends pairing up with Dad's friends, and Mom would (naturally) pair up with Dad.

But to her shock and horror, Dad walks into the bar with his girlfriend in arm, a girl whom we shall henceforth call Beth.

She spends the rest of the night drowning in alcohol and scheming how to exact her vengeance, somehow deciding to bring wrath and fury upon my Dad. She made a bet with her best friends, saying that before the week was out, she'll have shoved Beth out of the picture, and Dad would be hers. Command and conquer, baby.

She invites my Dad out for drinks the next day, this time at a classier joint.

My Dad arrives with his buddies, but warns everyone that he'll have to beg off early because his girlfriend Beth has cooked a special dinner for him that night--consisting of his favorites like pinakbet and liempo and such. Sorry, guys. I can imagine my Mom narrowing her eyes at this. Meanwhile, smiling.

She gets him stone fricking drunk. So very very drunk, that he misses his date.

However, mom's evil laugh didn't last long because, Dad somehow made up with his girlfriend such that she promised to cook for him again. They set their date for Saturday after their PMA Parade, before my Dad and his classmates were scheduled to leave for Manila on assignment.

My Mom somehow sniffed this out, and concocted another evil scheme which she promised to execute flawlessly.

Somehow, she and the girls got invited along to watch the parade at PMA with Dad and his buddies. After which, everyone else retired to their respective nooks to rest so that they'd be fresh when they'll travel to Manila in the evening.

My Mom, charmed and flirted like a hussy, and ended up convincing my Dad to ride with them. Mom's best friend Grace, who owned the car and who was in on the plan, decided to take seven long detours on the way home, including a long and winding drive up a mountain. So long, that my Dad missed his date.

By the time they got back to the city, it was too late, and he had to hop on the bus immediately, to get back to Manila, thereby missing his second date that week, and leaving his girlfriend to steam and sour on a dinner table full of uneaten specially-prepared food he never got to taste. They had an epic quarrel, no doubt, because by the time Dad got back from Manila, he was already Mom's boyfriend.

Mom gets a pile of cash from her friends, because she won the bet, making Dad her boyfriend before the week was out, and bitch-slapping Beth out of the got-damn picture. Obviously, they ended up getting married. And that's how we came to be. . . *shudder*

But there's still a long saga in between, from what I hear from them, my Dad's version making out my mom to be a frivolous, flirty, volatile, two-timing beeyatch girlfriend (told very lovingly, I assure you), and My Mom's version. . . well, she admits to two-timing. "Eh kung ikaw ba naman kailangan mag-hintay nang tatlong buwan dahil nasa Mindanao siya, na hindi naman tumatawag, anong gagawin mo??!"

To this day, she insists that the moral of the story is that I have to be a go-getter if I want to meet "the right one", the guy I'll end up marrying. But I didn't get the aggressive temptress gene. Maybe it's recessive. Her grandchildren will be gago, I can tell.

Meantime, I ended up as an awkward, wallowing little twit who never gets any dates. Although I can picture myself getting married someday. And yeah, I could have my own love story someday, sure.

Although I'm pretty sure it won't be so "The Bold and The Beautiful"-meets-"Melrose Place"-meets-"She's All That"-esque in proportion. (I can picture my Dad now: "Is that true?? Am I just a stupid bet?! *sob*")

All things considered, I think they turned out pretty well. I mean they're married now for almost two decades. And they've still got the spice going, don't ask me why or how, it's too traumatic.

It's funny though, because all these years I always thought of my parents as pretty boring people. You really can't imagine they came out of a love story that was pretty fucked up when you think about it.

 

May 1 rally was OK. My parents even encouraged me to go but my Dad teased me to no end. He gives me money and says like, "o ayan, para sa bayan!"

If anything, I got a nifty new fedora hat, tanlines on my upper arms that look like shirtsleeves, and met a new Russian (Sergey) who joined the rally--walked roughly 15 kilometers with us and suffered the heat too! And he's so galing at speaking Filipino. I asked how many years he's been here, he said "last September lang." Eh bakit ang galing mo mag tagalog? They teach Filipino as a foreign language in college daw.

Everyone started calling him "Russian Revolution." Terry's all like, "O, nasan na si Russian Revolution?" Usually he's talking to Fudge.

I was flag bearer, walking and/or sprinting behind the really big Oust flag, but didn't chant so much this time. Really long line, I doubt if anyone beyond two rows could hear me. The whole thing rocked, though, despite the heatstroke. Really big turnout.



I bet all unenlightened drivers were so pissed at us for blocking entire sections of road from Espanya to Mendiola. Rallies disrupt the status quo, and even if we scream and yell, much as we want to bring down a corrupt regime, rallies aren't specifically meant for that.

It's not cause and effect, like say, if you rally, she steps down (although in special circumstances and conditions it could happen), but we do this to show the  current (presumably oppressive) status quo CAN be disrupted, and it SHOULD be disrupted, and it's an awesome smack-in-your-face way to get your points across. To the general public. We call it "prop action." And rallies are the highest form. But not the highest form of struggle.

Anyway, I talked to Sergey a couple of times, 80% of which he didn't understand or couldn't hear so it was pretty much just me conversing with his cheek. He's from St. Petersburg and said R&B's really big in Russia. Made a mental note to check it out. Then I asked him if he likes Kirpichi but he asked me why and I couldn't explain. But their nickname for him turned out to be quite apt.

Tin: Nagrarally ka ba lagi?
Sergey: Dito o sa Russia?
Tin: Dito.
Sergey: Hindi, ngayon lang.
Tin: Eh sa Russia nagrarally ka?
Sergey: Oo sumasali ako.
Tin: Bakit ano ba issue niyo dun?
Sergey: Patalsikin si Putin.

I was laughing so hard.

May issue of Fortune 500 is out and about in the house. I got bored and started reading it. Things of note.

One of the reports said oil companies are drilling in the polar ice caps. Which alarms me quite a lot.

Maybe because something fishy's going on there. They're gonna ruin the polar ice caps more. may or may not cause polar bears to die. [Oooh, fact! did you know polar bears live in the arctic, and penguins live in antarctica? totally different neighborhoods!]

Why are they allowed to drill up there? Again? I refuse to believe we've reached peak oil this soon, or that we're running out. Someone out there's got the goodies and doesn't wanna share. Or all this bosh is speculation and giant superprofit-driven.

Good news, though, the polar ice caps are melting! Yeay for them! Because, the story said, it means they can break through ice easier (Russia's got a big headstart, it said), drill miles beneath the ground, and/or discover plant life deep within the cold arctic sea and hope to god the billions of years have turned it into the mulch we call oil. Deesis "The New Arctic Oil Rush."

I mean, there MUST be serious downsides to this, right? Right? Guess I gotta do a bit more reading.

Meantime, hang in there, little guy. . . girl? . . it's a little hard to see.

I know this song's tagal na, but THIS IS WHY I LOVE TOOL!!! Badass bass sheeyat. Badass bass sheeyat.






and because I'm so anal about knowing what lyrics mean. you can't get any more nerdy than this.

You wouldn't think you'd end up at this place on your "work break."

But finally finally finally I can say that I've been there and done that on that street with these people.

Although I always imagined it would be different, and wouldn't smell like horse shit all the time, but more like noodles and tikoy, and that it would have more AUTHENTIC chinky people. But I had a kick-ass time! Some of my favorite moments were:

• the spiky-penis medicine
• francis buying the cheap apple "champangne" with no name; and asking the saleslady to read the label
• francis buying the cheap "champangne" with no name, and being told that it's gonna help his sex drive. "Pwedeng pwede!!!"
• hunting for working ATMs in narrow eskenitas and NOT dying
• the almost-ride on a horse-drawn carriage
• the semi-awkward conversation
• the freaky sex toys and breast enlarging pills
  
• manong mais giving audio-visual (read: emphatic hand gestures) instructions on how to get there
• the Korean DVD store
• the slightly sleazy temple of junkies
• saying "Shing Tang Mayyyyyyyyyyyy!!!" over and over
• the Chiu Chow style of dining with the excellent tap water
• because it's the darkest, most metal broccoli tips I've ever had in my entire life.

Needless to say, I enjoyed our little adventure, and I'm never going back there ever again. Cheers.

got a ym message from hida_berserker   tonight. told me to head over to this site where I can vote for The New Seven Wonders of the World. which I find quite fascinating. 

First because, people!!!! we're voting for the world's seven wonders now! as if they're politicians or beauty queens (why only seven, by the way?) and we're doing it online!!

And because it's such a fascinating power play! who gets to define what a "wonder" is? (well, the website has a feature where you can recommend a place or building to be included in the roster of candidates, which seemingly democratizes the polling process. but not really.)

Consider: are all the countries represented? Are there more entries from first world countries than poor ones? 

Oh, and take into account the fact that not everyone is hooked on to the world wide web, nor to a computer as a matter of fact. Third world? We are at a major, MAJOR disadvantage, guys. Hey, I want the Philippines' Chocolate Hills to have made it into the top 5 as the next guy, but who are we kidding? It's called the digital divide.

Are they "wonders" because they've survived several centuries and were left over by ancient civilizations? Are they "wonders" because they hold a record in a book? And why do you hold natural locations (there are canyons and rivers in the running) in the same category as man-made structures? And why are we voting for them anyway? quel est le point??

Take the Taj Mahal for example.

Such a lovely, romantic, breathtaking, magnificent structure. Yes, it made it to the top 7. And, you would initially say, it's a winner because it's a wonderful world icon. It's a testament to unconditional love. Dedicated to a dead Indian king's wife. A nice tourist spot. An architectural marvel. And yes, it takes great pictures like the rest of them. 

It also doesn't hurt that this mausoleum was firmly campaigned for by its national government. India's vote-for-the-Taj-Majal campaign. It's that important.

which means that getting world renown (we call it "soft power") is soooo important in a world where there's an economic and political disparity among nations. Like, we may be poor, we may be starving, a lot of us may be illiterate, but at least we get brownie points for the Taj Mahal.

Which, by the way, wasn't constructed out of thin air, but by thousands and thousands of workers who had to toil, day and night, who had to die, from overwork and disease, who built this magnificent structure, who had their hands cut off after their work was done because the king allegedly didn't want them to ever copy this building EVER, by a nameless, faceless, oppressed labor force who never benefited from the fruits of their work.

 they sound so much like some other band in this one-------hmmm-----i can't quite put my finger on it yet.

 

grades are better than expected, all things considered. 

truth is, I didn't like BJ so much, and I skipped our midterm paper. and I felt that I wasn't so good at BJ. maybe with a little practice, I can BJ better. Though our final BJ presentation went well. I still think I could've made a better effort BJ-ing.

But here's the thing, six plus plus years in college, and I've never gotten an INCOMPLETE before.

So I need a little help. How does one go about COMPLETING an INCOMPLETE? 

I'd really like to finish my BJ.

I don't know if this happens a lot to you, because it does to me, but that doesn't make the occurence any less wierd.

See, when you're walking around campus, minding your own business, and a gold car stops by, driver rolls down the window, leans over and says "Excuse Me" you usually expect it to be followed by "could you tell me how to get to..." so and so location on campus. You just tell him where to go, and part ways.

But when a thirtyish, pockmarked, polo-clad stranger man says, "Hey, you're from MassComm right?" And you've never seen him before, you can't help but hear the warning bells in your head.

And then, "Wala lang, familiar ka kasi." 

And then, "What's your course ba?"

"Film?" No, Journ, I say. 

Is there a point to this? and your face says it. So he looks through the windshield and you wait stupidly for the "I'm just a creepy guy who stops women around campus lang, so anyway it was nice to chat, good-bye!"

Instead, he says, "Where are you going? Katipunan?"

Um.... Vinzons? Which is like, thirty feet away.

And he goes, "Oh. Do you need a lift?"

O-kaaay. Running away now.

But you have to be polite with these people because if they're psychos, they might get pissed off and kill you in a dark corner someday. I said no but thanks!!!!! And sprinted away.

Maybe hookas could get used to that, but I never do.

There's only so much you can do in terms of stringing coherent thoughts together if you're fatigued and seriously intimidated by what you have to do, or write, or give a textual analysis of--informed by popular culture theory. 

You get the feeling you know this shit, you've written shit like this before. you've been to the lectures. and taken copious notes.

You've taken 18.5 courses in how-to-read-a-text-using-Marxist/Feminist/Postmodernist/Semiotic-theory, got dammit.

But I still sort of feel clueless like the sperm in the condom floating in the toilet in Fight Club.

"You have to wonder what do sperm think.

This?

This is the vaginal vault?"

Except you sort of have a better head to think with than the sperm.

Just came back from a three-day trip out of town. Sipped juice from a coconut, marinated in a pool, drank pee and sulfur in the kid's pool, struggled into a bathingsuit, watched the foreigners and their filipina girlfriends flirt in the water, watched kites flying, watched the moon waxing, looked at churches, took pictures, ate a lot of salt-content, played poker with our parents and cleaned them out. 

Watched TV with a busted cathode ray tube, sweat like hell, complained about my big bloated arms. Hiked up a grotto, got caught in the rain, bought stuffed toy monkeys, and paper straw hats. Loved every minute of it.

Now we're back, we're settled, we've peed motor oil.

And I have, as usual, a million things to do.

I miss this view.