Here are some pictures from my favorite tagger Ate Ces taken October 9 (Orani Town Fiesta) at Inang's house in Apollo.

My energy is waning... I'm like a fish drowning...

Tons of work. Tons tons tons of work. (And what am I doing right now? Blogging. Har har har.)

I was a moderate crammer in college. This means that I manage my time well despite all the stuff I have to do: papers, martial arts, organizational work, and the heaviest task of all -- walking the dog. If my performance in any of those is rotten, it only means that I'm tired out of my guts. And that rarely happens (but when my PMS is on, that always happens). Once, in my Communications III class, I made a mini-magazine overnight and overday. I did the layout in less than 24 hours -- in MS Word mon dieu! I used up my printer's colored ink. I didn't take a bath because after school I went to my groupmate's place only to decide later on that I'd rather do it myself at home rather than pay for the pc and printing job while trying to impose my style preferences (read: ka-OC-han) on my groupmate. I hardly ate. My hands were shaking when I was printing our project on glossy paper without being confused on which page is on the odd side and which page is on the even side, and which is on the back side of which while three of my groupmates were contacting me on my cell because I've only got a minute to go before the deadline beats me!!! Oh crap! But I did it. I dressed up, hurried to catch a jeep, and ran like hell up the three flights of stairs leading to our professor's room. And guess what my dears. It was a Saturday, that day. And she extended the deadline to Monday! Grrr. I could have done it better, it could have been perfect! Now, what I passed had a misspelled entry. Hobbie. Is this a word? Phbbbt! Anyway, the moral lesson of the story is that I CAN accomplish what I wanted to accomplish just by willing it to be accomplished. Get it? Wait, I remember another fragment of my childhood. It was past my bedtime -- still my homework wasn't done. I asked for my mother and my tita's help. They can't execute what I demanded of them. The homework, or "Ass" as I abbreviate it in my notes, was to draw any aspect of the Death March. I can't draw; so, like I said, I made my guardians do it. You know what my tita did? She drew stone figures (I call them that for they were the reverse of stick figures in volume) of people walking. Then they left me to improve on it mainly because I wasn't happy with their output. I was about to cry when I said to myself, "draw a Japanese soldier." I took the pencil and while they were all sleeping I drew a man in a uniform -- with a cloth under the helmet -- holding a bayoneta (the drawing was pretty accurate because I found a reference in one of my books). His back was facing the viewer because he was on a hill overlooking the marchers. The drawing was good. Nearly surrealistic. Not to mention that he was "sakang" or bow-legged, which I boasted to my mother and tita, and which earned a smile of recognition from Tatang. I drew on an illustration board my dears. I was eight. A really sleepy eight-year old.

Yesterday, I took the driver's seat. My boss was gone so I handled all the goings-on at work. This much I can tell you: I was Supreme Becoming. Deduce that. I can't risk the ire of anyone at this moment. I've got a PowerPoint presentation to do.

If I were given a choice as to which event in my life I would want to change, I think it would be my grandfather's demise. Today's his 13th death anniversary. I tried to picture what my life, what all our lives, would have been if he lived through that heart attack. Maybe I wouldn't become such a pain in the ass because he'll be there to straighten me out. Maybe my cousin would still be in Manila studying because he'll be there to give him sound advice. Maybe an uncle of mine wouldn't be frequenting videoke bars and sporting his gun because he'll be there to spank him (verbally, I suppose). Now I'm smiling -- I think Tatang just escaped the perils of living with us. Mwehehehehe. Do you know what the Chaos Theory is? It says that a flap of a butterfly's wings at one end of the world could create a hurricane at the other end. I watched Ashton Kutcher's "The Butterfly Effect" yesterday and I'm still confused on what the butterfly effect is exactly. In the movie, he (i.e., his mind) has the capacity to go back in time and sort of "remake" scenes from his past. It was trial and error for him to get his desired outcomes. So my question is, if everything is causal, or has a cause-and-effect relationship, how does it support the Chaos Theory? Is it in the unpredictability of events? Is it in the dependence of things on the character's whims? Is it in the scriptwriter's crazy idea of existence? Hay buhay...

Hell yeah it's real and it's on my nape. Finally, snapshots of my tattoo from Black Strawberry (@ G2). Thanks to mr brian loya for the pix.

"SERIOUSLY, it's Sean Penn." He and his son Hopper were on the episode of Viva La Bam! yesterday, joining the Prank Wars of Bam Margera and Johnny Knoxville/Ryan Dunn. Don Vito was there and he choked Sean merrily at the end of the show. Har har har.. their jackass tricks still make me grin like a monkey. The only tv shows that I dig nowadays (Smallville having ended its season) are CSI, Life As We Know It, and Viva La Bam! -- and they are all aired on Wednesday nights. Which makes me happy, at least once a week.

I've never been this pissed off my entire life. If I could kill with my mind, half of mankind would be exterminated. But then nature is already doing that. Catastrophes are piling up. The weather's really gloomy this past week. And I've gained weight. So, that's why milk is bad for you! Besides torturing cows worldwide, the calcium in your bones leach out. And you get fat like a newborn calf. See? Everything is connected to everything else. Please guys, don't eat meat, dairy products, eggs, caviar, foie gras, and stuff that's supposed to be alive if not for consumerism and carnivorism or whatever. You (and I before) have polluted and abused the world 10x over. Stop it. Or you'll be a mutant before you realize it. Half man, half garbage.

I grew up not caring about anything or anyone else but myself. I existed in my own crazy little world. I answered the activity books and find-a-word puzzles I can lay my hands on, I watched every VHS tape we had (about a thousand of them, including the rated Rs), I ate all sorts of chocolates, I played with dragonflies (I truly feel sorry for those I have mangled), I did all my schoolwork in advance, I read the books/mags my cousin Ate Keng left (with her goodbye scribbles addressed to me). Everything... I did everything. Except have fun. They were all tasks I needed to accomplish. You know, like missions. Even pestering my cats was a mission. 'Detachment' pretty much defines my personality. I have always seen myself from the eyes of a spectator, as if I weren't living my own life. I watched me say things and do things to people and my surroundings. I am my number one critic. Which makes it harder, actually. Because I tend to do the things that I told myself not to do, or something. Aaahhhhhhhh!! I'm going nuts! So I ask myself: Am I still making sense?