Emotional Wastebasket Post. Sorry, Not Much Substance Here For Now.

“He missed it, sitting opposite her…So that was all over…Why had he obstinately clung to that dream?

So all these years–since when?–he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens.”
–Paz Marquez Benitez, “Dead Stars”

Rainy Sunday night. Sawian na!
Not for today though.
Missed opportunities, though, a more pressing issue. Too bad for him he lost both.
Anyway, back to topic. We just had a teleserye-like fight earlier. Kind of happens once or twice a month where you’ll hear shouting that make soap operas look cheap and shallow (okay, myabe a bit of an exaggeration there, but it’s getting there). This prompted me to reflect on a few things while being alive.
What would have happened have I not seen *this* major in the ACET application form? What would have happened if I actually managed to decide in time to transfer schools for high school? What would have happened if I wasn’t actually born at all?

Let’s try to answer the first.
One would be I’d probably be in DLSU right now, studying computer science and probably in hell week mode for the upcoming finals while still feeling a bit bitter for not being able to get away from some of my batchmates (more on that some other time).
Second.
I transferred to *that* nearby school. Might probably be a different person. Might probably lead a different life. Might even have a relationship with someone. A different set of friends, a different mindset, a different personality altogether. Might not even be studying here in the first place.
Third.
Due to the almost monthly even-louder-than-telenovela-episodes in the house, I can’t help to be but be a bit more bitter and dark than usual. Sometimes even to the point of lightly running thoughts of suicide of various means (my favorite would be a gun to the head, quick and painless, but there’s a more elegant method, I guess.) Also, I’ve stopped expecting much from pretty much anything. Sure, there’s still that high standard for me but there’s just this point where it has no meaning anymore since I never hit it. Setting low expectations kind of eases things a bit. You wouldn’t be disappointed for not meeting your personal standards, but still get frustrated for failure to meet said standards.

So, what’s the point?
Point is, while we can’t always have cake and eat it too (by the way, the cake is a lie; so is the pie), we might as well just make up with what we have. That includes opportunities. Including the ones that we missed. A fact of life, a fact that keeps me happily miserable.

Lost dreams and frustrated options. The enemy of an indecisive mind.
It’s a f-ing rainy Sunday night. I’m supposed to be happy but the wind is just scaring the crap out of me. We just lost power and internet, and possibly phone due to a now-dead transformer. This sucks. Add that to a fear of a loose piece of GI (no, not that GI, you know what I mean [do you?]) steel suddenly tearing off from the roof of a warehouse directly behind our house which is also adjacent to a junk shop where the warehouse is located in. Crap life this really is.
Kinda explains why ramming a wall head-on at 100kph in EDSA tomorrow became an option.

Change and Denial

Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days…Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.

William Faulkner – A Rose for Emily

In this scene, a flashback to the time when Emily’s father died. Several people tried to convince her, but she wouldn’t budge.

No, Santa exists, Bigfoot is real, aliens live amongst us, Lochness is real. LALALALALALA I’M NOT LISTENING *plugs ears*

NOT. Or maybe. Not too sure.

It’s denial! So hard for some of us to cope with some things. I’m not addicted, I’m not an alcoholic, I’m not a/an *holic.

One of the actions people do that we hate but still do. We hate because we can never get a straight answer but we still do and love to do because we like to give some people a hard time gettng what they want or simply just can’t admit. Then we get to the point of when we simply can’t hold the mask on any longer, break down and cry. It hurts. No physicalities involved but still hurts. Probably even worse than that slap made by someone.

/incoherent

Old Man Warner snorted, “Pack of crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while.

Shirley Jackson – The Lottery

A regular affair of a lottery taking place. A lottery of a now-forgotten origin. A lottery about to begin. Everone in town gathered in order to participate in this special affair. Implied in here that the lucky drawer gets stoned to death. Such luck indeed.

Guess this one’s obvious. It’s change! Like how I switched over from Windows to Linux (distro Kubuntu). Wasn’t easy but very rewarding. Got a new desktop look too. (Hint: use WINE)

But let’s make this clear: I’m not going to talk about change and people not accepting it. I’m going to talk about how people react to new things.

Say you have a new invention or contraption that you’re trying to sell. It looks weird according to that day’s standards and has not seen a practical use for it yet. Fast forward to present time, it’s everywhere. So everywhere that no one realizes that people used to laugh at it for being so unwieldy, stupid or impractical. People are like that. Most of us are like that. Averse to change. It’s already working, why? Thing is, yes, it’s working but there might be a better, more efficient way to things.

In short, we’re all afraid of change. It’s inevitable, it happens and probably one day, even one of the universe’s constants may change and screw all scientific calculations from that moment on.

Okay, I take it back. There was change in the paragraph. Oh well.

/mumbles-unhappily-to-sel-for-not-getting-to-the-org-team-in-time

“Nothing I had is truly mine”
Dido – Life for Rent

Oh, look! A rant!

The deeper societal problem is lookism. For decades people’ve been willing to talk about racism and sexism, but they’re still reluctant to talk about lookism.

At the start of the story, there were concerns of the potential side-effects of calliagnosia, referred to as “calli” for short. A disorder (may or may not be self-inflicted) where you cannot see beauty in peoples’ faces. According to them, it levels the playing field. I find it to be superfluous. True, looks can get you somewhere but it’s not going to always work. Tell me, how can you bluff your way out of a car accident?

Ha! Lookism. One more term invented for political correctness, my ass. Like it or not, whatever you do, you will end up offending someone, somewhere, some other time. Don’t want to offend anyone? Don’t live. Wait, you’re already living. So what do you do? Kill yourself. Cease to exist. Easy right? Nope. Still no. You kill yourself, that’s still an action. That means you still offended someone. Get the point?

Point is, it’s all pointless. Everyone has differences. Norms are normalities because the majority is and says so. Everything is everywhere! Look different? YOU’RE NOT NORMAL. You either get labeled as a weirdo, autistic or whatever. It’s all invented by society. Hence,
this: http://m.xkcd.com/1073/ (credit to a friend who saw this strip)

We had a defense against beauty…There is a type of tonal agnosia, or aprosodia, that makes you unable to hear voice intonation…There’s also an agnosia that prevents you from recognizing facial expressions. Adopting the two of these would protect you from this type of manipulation

Guess what, it’s called censorship. Self-censorship even. You intentinally blind or avoid yourself from the “colors” of the world. You get less meaning from your daily interactions. Eventually, when you become blind to these stimuli, it reduces a human being into essentially a robot. An emotionless robot. Nothing more, nothing less. Life *then* loses meaning. So, eventually, we all arrive in this Orwellian future. Everything is now monitored, controlled, pasteurized, homogenized, sanitized and commoditized. Go figure. This is the trend we’re all going through. Most of the governments now are monitoring communcations. Next step might be a monitoring of everything by now. Scary stuff right there. It’s practically, genetic manipulation taken too far.

 

Too cynical? It’s not going to be once this pattern becomes the norm. Take it as a warning, not as a threat.

Tips on how to be insane

Here’s a few tips on how to be/how to stay insane. No, not clinically insane. Just society insane. Or probably the kind that will kill you. Probably all of it.

1.) Be paranoid; if you are already, add more.
2.) Talk to yourself. Aloud.
3.) If people find you weird, good. Stay that way.
4.) Keep running those hypothetical situations in your head. Then exaggerate.
5.) Keep thinking of those “this person doesn’t like me” or “s/he thinks I’m probably X” where X would be a negative.

That’s all for now. Comment below if you have suggestions!

Week 1 of four years. Hooray. /sarcasm

Reading could be that occasional escape from reality. A prod by curiosity; enticing you for that one more page before leaving for slumberland. It is a way of life, living and survival. A means of knowledge and entertainment enabling access to larger-than-life scenarios and events. A glimpse of the possible future or a window to the past, possibly even catapulting you into eternal life as a memory forever impressed on a person influenced by these works of art and intergrated into culture and society.

As my mother have always said, “if you hate someone and would like to ruin that someone’s life, teach that person how to gamble.” Would the inverse be true? Where if you want to better someone’s life, give that person a good book? Quite possibly. Inspiration may come from within but sometimes there’s that boost needed from something else. That, for me, would be either “Nineteen Eighty-four” by George Orwell or Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” (still reading, might have to reread, lost my position in the book). As for books that I don’t like, so far none. Yet. Things may change with time and probably there might be that certain title in the list (no, not Twilight, haven’t read it and don’t plan on reading it so no comment).

How old am I? Let’s just say old enough to drive but too young to have a proper family yet. That might give you a pretty good guessing range. Now, given the scenario that I have a kid, what books would I give to them? Well, there would be your traditional textbooks (if it would still be there, heard that some schools are switching to tablets; still doesn’t beat a physical copy at home) and maybe some novels. “Hope for the Flowers” would be a good start. Probably some by Roald Dahl too. Great author. Loved “Matilda”. It’s that sort of fairytale rooted within reality. Winnie the Pooh also! Never forget Winnie the Pooh. Maybe some Bob Ong when the kid’s old enough. Bob Ong hits that spot between comedy and criticism (ABNKKBSNPLAko!)

So that concludes this week’s post. Yes, it’s incoherent beyond reason. Yes, it sounds forced. Yes, it sounds like a retarded monologue. Sorry about that, I’m not myself today, just like any other day. Or maybe writing’s not really up to scruff lately. Refresh the front page again next week for a new post. Honestly though, I’m more comfortable with Drupal. A mirror of this blog set up under Drupal will be up soon. Just need to config the server right.

Did I let you down? Flame me with your comments below! All insults go to /dev/null or /dev/zero though sometimes it might be routed to /dev/full so it might just be bounced back to you. meh.