Balot PInoy

On an impulse driven by two facts:  we didn’t have anywhere else to go and nothing else to do, JJ and I decided to watch Bangkok Dangerous.  And what a mistake that decision was!  It was a reel torture sitting there and watching Nicolas Cage demote himself in the film’s mediocrity.  I feel sorry for him, for the Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, Face Off, ConAir, and National Treasure I.

The film started not half bad at all.  However, half an hour into the movie, when one would have already seen riveting kick-ass action in a good assassin movie, we started getting rather impatient–silently rowdy, if there’s such a term.  The movie’s plot unfolded in slow-mo.  It was a drag, actually.  It was like watching Driving Miss Daisy but with lots of guns and assassinations by an anemic Cage whose hairdo in the movie reminds me of Ledger’s Joker without the make-up.

Is he scratching his armpit while shooting somebody?

Cage plays Joe, a hard-boiled assassin who kills with coldhearted efficiency.  In what would have been his last job, he goes to Bangkok to off four men as ordered by some rich, bad gangster dude.  You see, another lethal shortcoming in the movie, apart from its slow, ambling pace, was its failure to develop and create some depth in its characters.  One doesn’t get to feel or know the characters enough for one to establish any emotion for them. The movie attempted to generate softness and emotion against what was supposed to be hardcore violence by injecting a budding romance between Joe and a deaf-mute pharmacist.  What was supposed to be a funny and romantic date that started off with dinner, girl-elephant-Joe tender moment and…wait…why did she suddenly turn into a fully-made up and costumed Thai cultural dancer?…turned out to be a ho-hum scene that just failed to deliver its intended purpose.  They might as well have suddenly burst into a song and merrily danced in the streets.  It would have served the same purpose.

Why ruthlessly cold Joe suddenly turned into a lovelorn I-will-do-anything-for-love Romeo with conscience is beyond me.  Who those four men were and why they became targets is beyond me.  Why Cage is sporting such a bad hairdo is waaay beyond me.  And why he did the movie in the first place is beyond me.

JJ, the movie sage, had his theories, though:

1. Cage was paid a humongous, splendiferous amount of money to do the movie
2. He’s best-friends with the Pang brothers and couldn’t say no
3. He’s vacationing in Bangkok and decided to shoot a movie while at it

Whatever his reasons were, one question kept reverberating between us until the credits roll–What the heck was he thinking??!   The only good thing about the movie was the ending–Joe blew his brains out–thus eliminating any possibility of a sequel.

P.S.  As if one bad movie isn’t enough, we watched Disaster Movie the following day.  It very well lived up to its title.  It was a disaster.  I couldn’t elaborate more.  Lesson learned:  Never watch a movie just for the sake of watching one.

In the last weeks that I had simply refused to write, I did something that I had never done before. I took a step back, took stock of things that matter to me, and just watched everything unfold before me–good or bad or neither. I made a list. Everything that happened, highlights of what would have been ordinary days, lines of songs I heard, photographs I randomly took, words spoken by strangers or otherwise, thoughts dripping in my head, things to do and things left undone…all these were meticulously written down. For what purpose? Beats me.

Or maybe I just wanted a third-person view of what has been going on in my life. Here are the things I’ve heard, read, felt in the past weeks–my thoughts, my life in bullet points. This random list may not mean anything to you, but these are the very things that had made my world turn the way it did in the last few weeks.

• “Mommy, you’re the sweetest thing God has made. You’re like the best doll I have.”
• “I love you so much I could eat you.”
• “Doesn’t Mama even remember that today is my birthday?”
• “Never prioritize anyone if to them you’re only an option.” (from a hard-hitting email from Py)
• “FYI: di lang work and ikaw ang araw ko. I never got to be alone…and now it’s taking its toll.”
• “I’m not in the mood to see ugly people today. So go away!”
• “Shit, I look so my age!”
• “Will you still feel that way if I told you that I’m in love with somebody else?”
• “You’re a wonderful person, utterly crazy, but wonderful.”
• “The day I thought I’d never get through, I got over you.”
• “You’re a mommy, you should know everything. Think properly!” (emphatically stated by Angela)
• “So who do you want me to love then?”
• “You have a very lovely voice, can you sing?”
• “I’m going home. Can’t work, can’t think, can’t do this. I don’t want this. I just wanna go home…”
• “I saw it. I was there. I saw people die.”
• “Grow back! Grow back! Please grow back!”
• “Because I’m good. My stats prove it. My past performance evaluation results prove it. And knowing myself and what I can do, I can say that I’m good.” (On the question, “why should we promote/hire you for the position?”)

I swing back and forth from feeling high and feeling low. Often, I get suspended in the middle, feeling nothing. Stoic. Sometimes ambivalent. There are many things I don’t understand. Sometimes, being stupid (or pretending to be such) gives one the right answers. Or choosing to feel nothing at one point leads to the right feeling that one desires. I don’t know why, but I guess it’s just the way some things work.

More often than not, the best way to say something is to not say anything at all. For me, at least.

I had wanted to go on a writing hiatus for a while to sort some personal things out, recompose myself, and try to wrap my head around the simple axiom that “everything happens for a reason” and why this line most usually comes up in the context of a kick-in-the-gut experience.  Apparently, I can’t escape from my writing impetus simply because it IS my escape.  Anyway….

For obvious lack of physical and intellectual activity after devouring two servings of chocolate ice cream and an entire medium-sized durian all by myself in an unhealthy effort to add three kilos to my shrimpy frame, I decided to bum around in the internet for some interesting reads.  Little did I know that I would come across this incredibly riveting story about a little girl who has seen the best and the worst of human nature.

I live in a third-world country where the sight of hungry children running around in torn and dirty clothes, begging for money and food and sleeping in the streets, is as common as the contrasting sight of huge malls, brightly-lit fastfoods, and wannabe fashionistas strutting around in cheap imitations of designer brands.  I hate to sound callous by saying that I am immune to the sight of poverty, abuse, and neglect–but I am.  Or so I thought I was until I read this true news story of The Girl In The Window published in the St. Petersburg Times last July 31, 2008.

I cried.  Paragraph after paragraph, I cried.  Both the mother that I am and the little girl I once was sat in shock, riveted by the unbelievably touching and equally shocking story of Dani.   Click on the link to read the story yourself.  You might see your parents–and your own childhood–in a different light after doing so.

Today is the fourth day of my nocturnal restlessness and the third day that I haven’t gone to work. Ironically, I think I’m getting the hang of it. This morning, I woke up at exactly 3:00am, did the usual prodding on my eyelids for them to unflutter back to sleep, but failed. So I got up, grabbed a stool, and reached for the stack of documents up the topmost rung of my bookshelf. At 3:00am, I suddenly felt a sudden surge of desperation to work on my documents for my study back in Australia hopefully in February. It’s waaaaaaaay overdue. Almost ten years overdue, as a matter of fact. I’m hoping against hope that, this time, I will push through with the plan. I simply can’t afford not to anymore.

While going through the many manila envelopes that I had accumulated, something caught my eye. Then another. And another. They were pictures. Of me. At my former university almost thirteen years ago. I let out a quiet chuckle as I pored over each of the three pictures. What a clueless, infatuated idealist I must have been then, I thought as I stared at the beaming girl in the photographs. Then my gaze strayed to a few pieces of paper, crumpled and smeared, and which have my distinct scrawl on it. It was me attempting to express myself in poetry. Here’s something I had written on February 11, 2003:

                                   It hit like it was 

                                               wont to do

                                   piercing, gripping

                                   like a sharp razor slicing through

                                               raw flesh

                                   I had feared it.

                                   expected it with dread

                                               only grayscaled by the whirlwind 

                                               of passion

                                   Was I supposed to see the line

                                               between joy and sorrow?

                                   or the demarcation  between hope and heartbreak?

                                   Have I jumped too high again

                                               without looking at how deep I’d fall?

                                   Perhaps.

                                   Or maybe, my heart,

                                               which had taken the plunge

                                               once before

                                               never lived to tell. 

I tried to dig up my memory vault for the very reason or emotion that had made me write such lines.  But my recurring selective amnesia failed me.  Was I that full of cheesy drama even then?  As if the cheesiness couldn’t be contained in one cheesy poem, here’s one more, written two years prior to the first one, on August 31, 2001, exactly seven years and one day ago.

                                   Somebody took the poetry in my life

                                               took away the rhymes

                                               brushed off all meaning

                                   Somebody took away the colors

                                               took every picture of dreams and hopes

                                               brushed away all shades of tomorrow

                                   Now the song’s gone

                                               the rhythm’s silent,

                                               the canvass is empty

                                   I must have wished too hard

                                               must have looked too far 

                                               for someone who was never there. 

 Jeeeezzzuss!  Reading the poems almost made me think what a lovelorn loser I must have been then.  And dammit, from 2001 to 2003?!?

There was one, however, that (at least) doesn’t sound like I was ready to slash my wrist in the name of passion.  Funny though, it’s dated February 11, 2003 too–the same date that’s stamped on the first cheesy poem.  I probably had gotten the dates mixed up….except that the two were written in the same red ink.  Hmm…

                                   Sleep tight, my little one

                                   close your eyes and let me hold you

                                   I’ll tell you of the colors of life,

                                   the joys of love,

                                   and the wonder of innocence

                                   that I once saw and which

                                   I now wish for you

                                   How I envy your laughter

                                   light as a feather–

                                   always a gentle touch 

                                    to my weary heart

                                   I must have done something good

                                   somehow, somewhere

                                   to be so blessed with your

                                   innocent smile, your gentle eyes

                                   As I enclose you in my arms,

                                   feeling the warmth of your tiny hand against mine

                                   I know an angel has forever touched my heart.

Now, I’m quite sure that I had written this for my little boy.  Perhaps the three poems were written by two of me–the woman who loved and the mother who always loves.  The way I look at it, they’re two different people.   Yet, they’re very me.

For three days in a row now, I have been waking up at 4 o’clock in the morning starving and feeling totally washed out. There was a slight deviation this morning, though. I woke up at 2:33am, stared at the ceiling for some time till I fell back asleep–only to wake up again at 4:33am. My head simply ignored all my attempts to snatch a few more hours of sleep. I tried counting sheep but decided to get realistic (”counting sheep” in the Philippines is freakin’ Western mentality brought about by an overdose of Sesame Street during childhood). So I tried mentally counting lizards instead. But even that wasn’t realistic because there ain’t no lizards in my room either. So finally, at half past five, I got up from bed and went outside.

Only then did it dawn on me that it’s been forever since I last went outside the house to really soak in the softness and peace that my favorite part of home–The Garden–never fails to bring to my senses. Apart from writing my thoughts down, my only refuge, my outlet, had been The Garden and the time I used to spend on it. For so long now though, I have been coming home three days a week only to sleep and stay in my room, play with the kids, sleep again, then pack my bags and travel back to work. I don’t even remember throwing a glance at The Garden all those times. How can I, when I can barely keep my eyes awake whenever I’m home?

The sight that greeted me was far from what I had desired to see. Instantly, everything that has been going on within me in the last five days seemed to have graphically manifested itself right before my eyes.

This is how part of The Garden now looks after the miscommunication with the chainsaw (massacre) guys who were ordered to just trim the almost 30-year old mango tree that was supposed to be the umbrella over where I had planned to have my Japanese garden. I didn’t know what to make of the catastrophe before me. The feeling was equal to, if not worse than, waking up the morning after you had been made to feel so disposable and small by someone you trusted, someone who you least expected would do such thing. I couldn’t describe enough the desperation I felt as I tried to silently scream at the huge stump before me, “Grow back! Grow back!” My eyes were burning hot with the deluge that’s threatening to fall. Of course, I know it won’t ever grow back again. What had been there almost my entire life is forever and irreversibly gone with one careless misunderstanding.

One might wonder why I’m making so much drama over a tree, over a garden. Well, for someone who never learned to love something that has been there right in front of them, or to seriously care for something that could easily be taken for granted simply because it has always been there, my drama over these simple things would be hard to grasp.

My only consolation is that there is still a part of The Garden that was kept intact. Although the Japanese garden that I had long plotted in my mind is now currently a remote idea, at least I know that there is still something left that would give me a breath of fresh air whenever I needed it.

And right now, I do need to breathe.

A very dear friend just spilled her guts to me today. It’s always been this way. She drools over a guy and my mobile would be swamped with text messages from her declaring that she has finally (to her, the word finally hardly means ‘final’) found the man of her dreams. After the nth guy of her dreams has come and gone, I usually don’t hold my breath anymore whenever she gushes over a brand new Romeo in her life. Then, she awakes from her dream, as she always does. Once again, my mobile would become her confessional box, her virtual Kleenex.

I didn’t want to say “I told you so.” It’s a line that I never say to anyone. Didn’t want to rub salt to the bruise. It wouldn’t make any difference anyway. But I didnt know what to tell her either. I’m never good at feel-good words. I would have preferred to just listen to her in silence and just let her feel that I’m always there for her. But how can one be silent on SMS without being misconstrued as uncaring? So I told her that everything will be okay, that she will move on in a snap like she always does. But, looking at her face when she came over a couple of hours after our SMS exchange, I knew, this time, she wouldn’t breeze through it.

Something tells me this one’s different. This one’s real. She’s broken. Shattered. And I was at a total loss for words. I knew there was nothing I could say to soften the blow of what she’s going through. For some reason, I felt her pain. I knew that look. I had had that same look on my face before. Had felt those tears singe my face before.

I’ve written so much about love and loss. I have felt so much, yet know so little still. What I know is that love lifts one up to great heights and then with one mighty sweep, it reduces one to a whimpering slob. Or vice versa. I have seen many people who seem to have built strong fortresses around them to keep people out. Yet their walls go crumbling down the moment they start to feel.

I’ve always pitied those cowards who don’t love at all; those who blame those people who broke their hearts for their inability to trust and love again. I pity those who mask their cowardice with false bravado as they shoo away those who get emotionally near them. I pity those who consider themselves victims of something that they had willfully gotten themselves into in the first place. I pity those who slump themselves in a corner, sour-graping, and bitterly licking their wounds instead of brushing themselves up and moving on.

I’ve always believed that the sun never goes down on anybody. The world neither stops nor waits for anybody–not even for one cosmic dust. It doesn’t matter if one has tarried in the past for so long as long as one would realize that there has to be no other way but forward.

My friend’s eyes were still swollen red when she stepped out of the house. Before she left, I held her hand briefly and told her to never stop believing that someday someone will love her as deeply and as madly as she loves, and that she should never settle (anymore) for anything less than that. She smiled and said, “you need to tell yourself that too.” Then she giggled like a little girl and held up the peace sign and laughingly said, “Joke!”

We both laughed. I knew, though, what she said to me wasn’t meant to be funny at all.

I was listening to one of my all-time favorite songs, Open Arms, on mp3 last night when I remembered that JJ had mentioned that Journey has got a new lead singer–a Filipino. I searched for Arnel Pineda on Youtube and my gawd, was I pleasantly taken aback! The guy has got the pipes. I momentarily forgot my sneezing and coughing as I marveled at the parity of the vocals of Pineda and the erstwhile golden boy (uh…with dark hair :)) of Journey, Steve Perry.

Then: Journey with Steve Perry (2nd from right)

Of course, there could only be one Steve Perry. In fact, for hardcore Journey-Steve Perry fans, he probably still is and will always be the face and “The Voice” of Journey. But one can’t help but be overwhelmed by Pineda’s smooth yet sometimes gritty rock tenor. Very Steve Perry though not quite. To me, AP’s voice has more “masculine” undertones than Perry’s high pitched vocals. Their voices are different from the other, yet so eerily alike in many ways.

I only know of a few Journey songs. Two favorites of mine are Open Arms and Faithfully. Last night, I discovered that there are still a few songs that I had heard and liked in the 80s that turned out to be Journey songs after all. “When You Love A Woman”, I believe, was released in the 90s. The fact that I’m hearing them again, this time sang by AP, is quite a huge treat, a very pleasant surprise.

Quite inspiring and touching, though, is the story of AP’s discovery and rise to stardom in less than eight months since he was officially announced as Journey’s frontman on December 5, 2007. It’s a contemporary Cinderella story–rockstar version. Neal Schon, Journey’s lead guitarist had been desperate for a new lead singer after Jeff Scott Soto, the second replacement of the iconic Steve Perry, was fired in 2007. He turned on Youtube and sat on it for two days scouting videos of singers and would-be singers singing Journey songs hoping to find that one voice that would revive the Journey legacy. Then he stumbled on a Philippine local band, The Zoo, with Arnel Pineda singing one of Journey’s trademark songs, “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Faithfully.” Schon couldn’t believe his ears; he needed to get out for a couple of hours in order for what he heard to sink in. To him, it was simply too good to be true. The vocal resemblance between AP and Steve Perry was uncanny. He contacted AP by email which the latter first took as a hoax, sent by a Schon impostor. When Schon finally convinced AP that he was the real deal, he asked him to fly to San Francisco to audition.

His first audition, however, happened at the US Embassy when he applied for his visa. The visa officer asked him why he wanted to go to the States. Pineda simply answered, “to audition for Journey.” The visa officer, also a Journey fan, then asked him if he knew “Wheels in the Sky.” Immediately, Pineda belted out Wheels in the Sky right there and then, much to the surprise and amusement of everybody around. It earned him his US visa and off he flew to San Francisco, where his big American dream would unfold.

Now: Journey with ArnelPineda

Being lead singer of one of the greatest bands on Earth is definitely a far cry from the world that AP grew up in. He was painfully shy as a child and would only sing upon his mother’s coaxing. He started joining amateur singing competitions when he was five years old only because his parents, both tailors, would bribe him with new clothes they’d make for him if he joined the competitions. When his father would approach him with a tape measure, AP would know that he’s in for another singing competition. When his mother died when he was thirteen, his father was forced to distribute his three younger siblings among their relatives while he decided to fare for himself by collecting metal scraps, plastics, and old newspapers from the streets. He was homeless then and had to sleep on the streets or in Manila’s Luneta Park.

At sixteen, he decided to audition for a band and was accepted. The band set out for Hong Kong where they performed for quite some time. AP eventually decided to come back to the Philippines and, after spending time in “trial and error” bands, finally settled with The Zoo which he co-formed with a friend from his former band in Hong Kong.

Then, history happened. With one video clip. With one phone call.

Journey’s first concert in Chile with AP

AP is now the next big thing in the rock music arena, bringing the legendary Journey back on its smokin’ tracks. He’s not without detractors, though, who bitch about his ethnicity, his accent, his height, and whatever the heck they could think of just to undermine the fact that AP now rules the rock stage with no less than the Journey. Comparison between AP and Steve Perry is inevitable. Truth is, AP already takes a dumpload of flak from people who can’t get over the fact that Steve Perry is out and AP is in. Steve Perry diehards call him a mimic, a Steve Perry wannabe. If that’s the case, then 104,000 people simply decided to buy Journey’s new Revelation CD all during its first week of release just to listen to this wannabe belting out every song in it? Or thousands and thousands of people trooped to jampacked, sold-out Journey concert venues all over the states and Europe just to watch this little brown wannabe rocking the stage? C’mon, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the maths.

What we have here is pure, raw talent. A real rags-to-riches story. A genuine whirlwind romance with fame that, I bet, will keep on whirling for years to come. AP himself says everything has been a dream–except that he’s fully awake. Dreams do come true and no one else can sing “Don’t Stop Believing” with more emotion and passion than Arnel himself.

Apart from the movies I watched on DVD four boring days ago, the last movie I had watched on the widescreen was The Dark Knight. I’m never a fan of Batman as I always find his superhero costume so stuffy and, for total lack of a better word, frilly and ostentatious. I am more into the superpowered superhero kind than a mere filthy rich dude who’s got the moves and the gadgets.

But this Batman installment I had to see. I must say, I’m glad I did. It took a while for the movie to sink in, though. I am very partial against long movies and The Dark Knight was a good 2 hours and 31 minutes! For exactly that long, I had implored my bladder to hold it so I wouldn’t miss a thing on my way to and from the ladies’ room.

It would be quite redundant if I ooohhed and aaahhed at how remarkable a movie The Dark Knight is. So I wouldn’t go there. With a pace that leaves moviegoers holding their breaths at every turn without for once losing its momentum, and at 400++ million dollars box office earning in less than three weeks, the movie pretty much lived up to all the media hype and promotions.

On the ride home, one character kept flashing in my mind and his insane voice resounded like a broken record in my aching head…”why so serious?….why so serious?… It was freaking disturbing. Heath Ledger’s The Joker was freaky and very, very disturbing. It was a retina-strain for me as I tried to look beyond the ghastly, disheveled powdered face of The Joker to see the face of the Heath Ledger I so had a crush on in 10 Things I Hate About You. In fact, if not for prior knowledge of who’s in the cast, one wouldn’t know The Joker was Ledger till the credits roll.

If there is any movie villain that I will have nightmares about, it’s Ledger’s The Joker. A psychopathic, schizo murderer without a single ounce of conscience and sympathy, The Joker makes Freddy Kruger seem like a Disney character to me now. That’s because he is real…can be real. Portrayed very realistically, very menacingly. I dare say the movie was largely about the Joker. He drives the audience to the edge of their seats whenever he appears on screen while Batman takes a backseat. Ledger reduces Christian Bale to a mere supporting actor by overwhelming the audience with The Joker’s presence that is pure, unadulterated evil.

I read about Jack Nicholson being furious that nobody even talked to him about The Joker role in this Batman reprise. Well, he can cool his jets now, because, as it turned out, Ledger did justice to the role Nicholson loved so much. Quite better than Nicholson himself did, actually. I am one of the millions who would root for a post-humous Oscar for Ledger. He sure made a great exit, making film history with a kick-ass performance that will no doubt become a benchmark of quality character performance.

Any actor would pee in his pants at the thought of being the next Joker, filling the very large shoes that Ledger left. And I can’t wait to watch who that actor will be. I’m putting my disappointment on hold in the meantime.

I was busy pounding on the keyboard of my laptop that is about to be mercy-killed when my son came to me and asked in a very serious voice, “Mommy, do people become angels when they die?“  Without thinking, I answered, “Yes, good people become angels when they die.”

Reflecting on the tiny fact of life that his wise mom just told him, my son’s eyes then lit up as he said, “Yey! I want you to be an angel, mommy. Please, die now, die!”

********************************

It was one of those days when I just wanted to sleep the entire day.  Angela was busy leafing through her World Book Children’s Encyclopedia.

Angela:  Mommy, who is Andreas Vesalius?

Me:  (half asleep)  Who does the book say he is?

(after three minutes of silent reading…)

Angela:  He’s the father of anatomy.

Me:  Very good, baby.

Angela:  (leafing through the encyclopedia still…)  Mommy, I can’t find them….

Me:  Find who?

Angela:  Anatomy’s mother.  And his sisters and brothers, too.

*********************************

Angela:  Eeeeww!  Who farted?!

Bro:  I didn’t!

Angela:  You did!  Mommy, Bro’s fart stinks!

Bro:  I didn’t fart!  (throws a B-Daman toy at his Ate)

Angela:  You did!  You did!  You farted!

Bro:  I didn’t! Smell my bum.

Angela:  (goes behind Bro and smells his bum) Eeeewwww!!!  Mommy!!!  Bro farted!

Bro:  Hahahahaha!! Ate smelled my fart!  (rolls on the floor laughing)

*********************************

The remaining couple of hours at work last Thursday found me gazing behind the drapes of the office (pretty much like the corporate prisoner that I apparently am) and wishing for the warmth of home and the endless kiddie chatter that’s very characteristic of it. I longed to jump onto the next available bus and head home which was then two hours away including traffic and the fact that I was temporarily stationed at the old office half an hour away from downtown.

Three hours after and while waiting for my takeout dinner, I heard the news. Another bombing. In MY city. On the bus that I usually travel on. On the very day I had longed to go home. I listened and watched as the camera panned around the scene of the crime. It was MY terminal, alright. The bus’ laminated windows were blown to tiny bits. The sight was a mess. The police were all over the place looking for clues in the debris or simply walking around or just standing there not even knowing what they were looking for. They looked busy, however—probably for the photo ops and the media coverage.

There were more than thirty people injured, three were severely harmed by the blast. The following morning, one of the victims died. She was a student in the college in which I used to teach. She had a promising life ahead of her, and it got blown to oblivion last Thursday.

I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why people have to extort money to feed their hungry asses instead of working for it—in a legal and moral way—like what any normal human being should do, and then resort to bombing/killing when their wishes are not granted. I don’t understand how these people could do what they do as if they’re just planting a candle on a cake and then blowing it. I don’t understand why they could easily snuff out the lives of people—innocent ones, and still get to sleep at night. I don’t understand how they could do it over and over again. I don’t understand why security is only tightened AFTER an incident.

Everything is pure stupidity, really—and that’s an understatement. Someone has to die or get blasted to pieces before authorities would start cackling and flapping their wings. It’s stupid why only males are asked to get off the bus for security check while women are allowed to remain on the bus without as much as being asked if she’s carrying a tonload of C-4s. It’s stupid that even in terrorism or matters of security, gender biases still exist. You’re a woman so you can’t possibly blow up a building. Well, a woman blew up one bus in my city three days ago killing one and injuring 35 people. How’s that for gender bias?

In malls, I don’t mind being frisked or having my bag/s checked. But I do mind being bombed to kingdom come. That is why, I hate it when guards just look at me and the purse I’m carrying and then just dismiss me with a wave of a hand and let me through. Many times, I am tempted to blow (pun intended) my steam at those guards. Frisk me! Check my bag! I’m carrying a…a… mini atomic bomb in my purse, you incompetent idiots! Heck, in this country, killing even the president is a piece of cake.

I don’t mean to be flippant about all this. I just don’t want to get too emotional because if I did get emotional here, I’d just be throwing expletives at those godless, abominable, inutile, good-for-nothing motherfuckers who suck pus and ought to be slammed into the pits of fire where they could kiss the ass of the devil himself. My French won’t make any difference, so I’d rather be emotionally composed here and stick to wholesome language.

Seriously, though, my heart goes out to the family of Zara Fe Abillero and to all the victims of the bombing. May you be given the justice that you all deserve and may the culprits rot in hell where they belong.

Remember when I told you that I only write poetry when I’m either raving mad about something or when I’m just being mushy or giddy about something that tickles my insides? Well, I’m neither right now. I’m not going to write you a poem simply because you’re not exactly poem material. Poems are like Al Pacino and you’re Chris Rock. Two different genres. Two different classes of human. You are, in fact, a material whose origin I still haven’t figured out. You’re probably part human, part alien, part teddy bear, an amalgam of these qualities.

With all those shitloads of crap that we had dumped on each other’s laps, those tales about people whom we both had realized we could have lived without, about bygone years we’d like to relive once in a while, it feels like we’ve been together since 200 B.C., give or take a few years if we factor in our giggling like five-year olds at our own and other people’s stupidity, eating like there’s no tomorrow, arguing, pushing and shoving (like two kids in the swing, you say?), spitting on each other’s faces (I own the intellectual rights to that!), pissing each other off…

We’ve gone through the awkward stage of getting to know each other. Heck, I think we even skipped that awkward stage. From polite first name basis, we have now accorded each other with more respect by calling each other “Bitch,” “Duckass,” “Egghead,” “Duckegg,” or simply, “Pssst!”

You have learned to accept the fact that I am and will always be the sexier one. And wishing that you were with someone fat definitely wouldn’t change the stats. To you, my head is and will always be tiny; and to me, your face will always be the size of an airport tarmac. Now that you’re trying to shape up to regain that drop-dead figure of yours during your glory days, I’m honestly worried that you may no longer look cute in my blue shirt. But of course, I would love to see you all hunked up again. However, watching you making beauty queen poses in my blue shirt and those epileptic fits of laughter that you draw out from me had been my only respite from the hassles of this cruel, cruel world. Must you take that away from me by beefing up and trying to be healthy??

You’re impossible. You know that I’m terrified of unearthly beings and ghosts and anyone abnormally ugly. Still, you can’t stop scaring me about your image of that little girl hanging upside down the ceiling. You know that I hate mascots. Still you drag me virtually kicking and screaming to the nearest mascot you see. You know that I don’t want any more cellulites rippling in my body. Still, you overload me with french fries, pizza, McDip, Goya Dark, your yummy carbonara, meringue, and everything else diet unfriendly just because you know I can’t resist them.

Even though my:

• clumsiness (tripping over myself and/or everything else)
• my selective amnesia e.g…

me: “Oh no, where’s my phone?!!

you: “Ok, I’ll run back and get it for you.” (comes back panting, tongue hanging out) “Your phone’s not there.”

me: “I know. It’s in my bag, sorry.”

• my cluelessness

me: “I got bitten by a frog!”

you: “frogs don’t bite, egghead!”

me: “Nooooo. It was a frog! It was a frog! I got bitten by a frog!”

• and my pathetic lack of ability to cross the street alone, and all those mishaps that I get myself into,

would most often give you cardiac arrest from annoyance, laughter, amusement, or worry, you never fail to make me feel good about myself. Your motivational skills are impeccable. The moment you pump up my confidence, I feel I can climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow…(okay, let’s not get carried away here)….

Your eternal tardiness, though, is completely beyond repair. You seem to have a different time zone of your own where the word ‘on time’ is unheard of. But of course, your “ang ganda mo” line spoken/whispered/breathed in different ways never fails to save your ass whenever I breathe fire at you or give you the cold shoulder for being late. You know you could get away with it, because you have mastered the many dramatic ways of saying “Sorry,” such as:

• Your Sheepish Grin Sorry—used when you know you were being utterly stupid and/or have dropped some IQ points e.g. erasing everything in my spam mail folder including those that I purposely saved, or plugging my portable 110-watt DVD player into a 240-watt outlet just to find out if it’s really a 110-watt device.

• Your Droopy Eyes Sorry—used when you know you had seriously screwed up e.g. when you had kept me waiting for more than an hour somewhere just because you had overslept and I got really royally pissed.

• Your Puppy Dog Eyes Sorry—reserved for when you had accidentally done something that you hope like mad wouldn’t piss me off e.g. when you lost my cellphone, or when you once forgot to claim the cake I had brought you from the check-out counter after we watched a movie and the mall had already closed.

• Your Im-Sorry-But-I-Don’t-Mean-It Sorry—reserved for when you just want to be a total asshole e.g. when you tugged at my hair and wouldn’t let go unless I let go of your hair first, or for times when you suddenly transform into Dracula and bite me everywhere like you would bite off a piece of your favorite dried mango.

You’re like a silly, stubborn, sweet, stupid, smart, sensitive, zany and sassy squeeze ball that I could squeeze over and over again either to let out some steam about something or to knock some sense into your head—or mine.

You’re a human potpourri of the best and worst. A handful, really. But then, I’ve got two perfectly normal hands to hold yours…the way you hold mine when and where it matters most.

Happy birthday, furball! I hope you like the cake. It’s peppered with burnt hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes love and care, and baked straight from the exploding oven heart (you know the tragic story). Mwah! xoxo.

Man, this song has been playing for four hours and eighteen minutes now. Computing the actual number of times that the song has repeated itself, I say, 73! That’s how I love David Cook. That’s how I love this song. That’s how currently smitten I am.

So I’m one of those goin’ ga-ga over David Cook. My friend, Doris, has got him on her profile pic, Aiai drools over him in her post, and my sis is heady over hunky David, too–along with probably half of the world’s female population. What can I say?! He’s one yummy, dreamy, pile of pure Alpha testosterone.

But I don’t plan to stop at merely ogling. I plan to pursue my heart’s desire. David Cook will land right on my lap, I tell ya. No, I won’t entertain the HOW question here. I just know deep in my beating crimson heart that I am the woman of his dreams; that I am that blurry image of a woman that he sees in his sleep; that my name is what’s at the tip of his tongue whenever he’s at a loss for words. He just doesn’t realize all these yet. But I’m gonna make him.

Having said that, HOW TO suggestions are most welcome. Perhaps I can start by erasing Kimberly Caldwell (the unknown that Davey is currently dating) from the face of this earth. But that would be mean. And even though I am mean, I prefer a fair fight, sans teeth and nails, of course.

Don’t suggest kulam or gayuma either. It only works here in the Philippines. I don’t have any geographical explanation for it, but kulam simply doesn’t work in the States, or with Hollywood celebrities. Duh. If it did, then George Clooney would’ve had crawled on his knees asking for my hand in marriage ER-years ago.

Don’t even mention the line “the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” and suggest that I cook for him because I am more of an eater than a cook. JJ (Name has been changed. Any similarity to actual person/s or circumstances is purely coincidental and unintentional.) has coined a term to describe my culinary capacity, “kitchen-impaired.” He practically drools over my cakes, though. But I digress… So cooking is a stupid idea. Even more so because of the fact that I’m not even virtually on the same planet with my David, much less in his kitchen.

How about kidnapping? Naaah! I don’t want the attention and the infamy.

Maybe I could just have him cloned. That way, I could have the same voice, the same unkempt boy-next-door looks, the same heart-stopping smile, the same everything. Maybe soon, I can have a few strands of his hair from e-Bay, thus solving the DNA requirement for cloning.

In the meantime, I’ll just have to rock myself back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth and stare blankly into space while listening to David’s songs over and over and over again.

I just got out from work and I’m completely out of the zone. I have Ctrl+A+deleted this line a million times and Ctrl + Zed it just as many times in my effort to come up with something to write about to get this utterly persistent yet strangely relaxing buzzing noise out of my head that started around 3 o’clock this morning. It’s the kind of steady buzzing that preludes something that’s supposed to be productive. In my case, however, it was the precursor to a deep, abysmal sleep.

I had tried to summon all the demons in me to fight off the sleepiness that was so determined to knock me virtually unconscious. But the demons failed miserably and found me slumped on my desk dreaming away in La La Land. As if coming from some underground tunnel, the trainer’s voice sailed through my subconscious and I heard a good-natured, “wake up, people! It’s already 6:30.” Damn. I had slept for almost three hours. On my desk. Right in front. In the middle of training.

If I had been the trainer, I would’ve bitchslapped me for snoozing and infecting almost half of the class. But then, I am not nice. Good thing she is.

Betcha a hundred bucks, you’re going to read this post (or at least attempt to do so if I don’t bore you to coma) because you want to know how far I’d go with the sex talk. Well…far, baby. Really far. There will be no innuendos here. No euphemisms. No beating around the bush. Just bold, no-holds-barred talk about pure, wild, animal sex.

Probably the best part of relationships is the courtship stage, regardless of whether or not it would ultimately lead to sex. Imagine flirty glances, sweet smiles and sexy looks thrown at each other…dinner dates, slow dancing…then drinking urine and smelling shit. Whaaaat???? Hey, I said we’re talking about pure, wild, animal sex, right? So, let’s talk about pure, wild, animal sex.

Once a boy giraffe sees a girl giraffe he fancies, he tries to make her urinate by nudging her rump with his head. When she does urinate, he drinks her urine and if he likes the taste of it, he then follows her around until he gets her into bed with him.

Hippos have a different style, though. They go for dung. To attract lady hippo, hunky hippo pisses and shits himself, and with mighty spins of his tail, he flings his produce (shit, piss, and all) and scatters them around for lady hippo to smell and go gaga over. And when lady hippo mistakes hunky hippo’s musk for CK One, she lets him have her.

Now, here comes Mr. Bowerbird, the obsessive-compulsive interior decorator. He impresses his lady by building a hut or walkway-shaped “nest” made of twigs and dried leaves. He creates the perfect ambience for his romantic trysts—a well-decorated abode with flowers, berries, pebbles, colorful bits and pieces of plastic and other trash, feathers, etc. He arranges them according to color with blue as his favorite. The more blue and beautiful his bower or nest is, the more chances he gets at landing the lady/ies of his dreams. And they will then live happily ever after. Or until after the little bowerbirds come, when mama bowerbird is left alone to fend for herself and the kids.

I have one perennial question: does size really matter?

The banana slug grows up to 9 inches long. And their average penis size? ALSO 9 freakin’ inches long. The freak show doesn’t stop there. These slimy creatures are hermaphrodites, which means that they will have to fertilize each other. To conveniently do this, a slug has to find a mate with the same organ size as his. If you see one slug’s penis in the other’s mouth, that doesn’t mean one is giving the other a blowjob. It means that one slug is biting off the other’s penis because it got stuck. A painful miscalculation, I must say.

She-gorillas don’t have much choice when it comes to size. They have bigger men, so they must have them in XXL sizes, right? Wrong. Those enormous gorillas have miniature dicks—teeny-weeny 1 ½ inch or 4 cm ding-a-lings. Really. But at least he’s got a harem of at least 5 up to 30 gorgeous gorillas to mate with all year long and with no competition from other male gorillas. So who says size matters?

Talking about the male equipment, I have another question. What do argonauts (a species of octopus) have that Aquaman doesn’t have? A detachable, swimming penis. The male argonaut uses a special tentacle or penis called hectocotylus to transfer sperm to the female. When the male argonaut sees the female he adores, he inserts his penis into her and then detaches it (yeah, the cock) so it could swim with the female until fertilization occurs. Cool, huh? Now, imagine the same detachable thingy on humans. I could picture Brad Pitt looking all over the world for his stolen dick.

Let’s face it, the world is populated with homo sapiens with diverse orientations that may categorize them anywhere within the range of the-perfect-lover and the i-wanna-blow-his/her-brains-out types of people. What if you happen to be in the sack with the latter type, with a total asshole? Well, you would bite your man’s head off after sex–if you were a praying mantis. The praying mantis religiosa finds it necessary to remove the head of its mate for faster ejaculation (yaiks!). S&M, anyone?

The queen bee also brings a different meaning to “fatal attraction.” Queen bees have sex with thousands of eligible male bees. But, before these bachelors could beat their chests in sexual victory for sleeping with the queen, their genitals explode inside the queen! And they die. Now that’s what you call explosive orgasm.

Women most often complain about men being too eager to stuff their stuff in without putting so much effort on foreplay. Well, tell that to the bed bugs. Male bed bugs are probably the most contemptible jackasses–by human standards, of course. They don’t even care if they can find the vagina. They just stab their sword-like penises into any part of the female’s abdomen and inseminate her right there and then! Armed rape, you say? No, it’s scientifically called “traumatic insemination.” Dang!

So you want longer foreplay, eh? Then be thankful you’re not a girl dolphin. Although boy dolphins have very strong sex drives, they don’t last long. I mean, once they get it in, count one to twelve seconds, then, BANG! It’s over. It’s a classic wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am thing. Twelve seconds to orgasm, it’s every woman’s nightmare. But, maybe one can make use of the dolphin’s joystick instead. It swivels! It’s prehensile too. Dolphins use their penises like humans use their hands. Now, imagine if humans… Okay, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

So who’s the greatest Casanova ever? It’s little brown Antechinus, an Australian marsupial that lives for sex—literally. During mating season, this little hairy casanova bangs every female he sees. Each female gets laid by this Don Juan for an average of 12 hours, then he goes on to another willing damsel. He gets so busy getting into the pants of as many females as he can that by the end of the mating season, his immune system has gotten so screwed up that he eventually rolls over and dies.

In the chaotic world that we live in, it’s nice to know that there are creatures who believe that “love (or sex) is the answer,” and have sex to solve conflicts or to celebrate. They are the Bonobo monkeys. Food fight? No, let’s have sex! A baby monkey is born–yipee! Let’s have sex! Neighbor monkey found some food—thanks! Let’s have sex! Two monkeys are fighting over one girl monkey—quit the rivalry and let’s all have sex! What a happy, happy bunch.

M. Night Shyamalan has always intrigued me ever since I watched that weird feature/documentary about him on cable (HBO or Discovery, I forgot). Or, ever since The Sixth Sense and Signs. The documentary was filmed when Shyamalan was crafting The Village which, I must say, was a tad disappointing against the suspense and wickedly brilliant twist of The Sixth Sense. It still scared me though. But then again, I even get scared of a silhouette of a towel hanging on a peg in my room when the light is off at night.

I watched The Happening last week, expecting to see Shyamalan redeem himself after that awful Lady in the Water. But man, was I disappointed! The story was a joke that bordered on ridiculous. Of course, it has the usual M. Night touches–the scary camera angles, the static shots, eerie silence. What the movie (and other Shyamalan movies, for this matter) can do without is the rigidly constrained dialogue between the characters. I mean, there is very little or no depth to the characters. Watching those characters is like watching a ventriloquist and his puppet. Mark Wahlberg saved the film in the acting category, though. But that woman who portrays Mark Wahlberg’s character’s wife, Zooey Deschanel, dang! I wanted to shake her wide-eyed face and say, “act real, bitch!”

The only part in the movie that I love was that scene where Wahlberg’s character was talking to a plastic plant. For me, that was the only “live” part in the movie. The rest was just plain, dead, boring, straight-from-the-script-not-from-the-heart acting. The worst part was the “love conquers all” scene where the three major characters emerge from their respective places of refuge and meet in the middle of the grassy space to supposedly “die together.” But the crazy plant phenomenon is over, so they live. Ho-hum. I sank deeper into coma.

It’s sad that Mr. Shyamalan hasn’t replicated the suspense, the gripping storyline, character development, the scary ‘joyride’, and the huge overall success of the mother of all Shyamalan movies, The Sixth Sense. Maybe he should concentrate on directing, which he is undoubtedly very good at, and hire someone else to do the writing?

If not for the yummy, creamy carbonara I had after the bland movie, M. Night Shyamalan might have entirely destroyed my day.