dreams come true

as i was waiting for my dial-up to finally allow me access to their network, i opened up notepad and wrote a short essay. this is filed under "for-those-who-don't-know".


I think I'm really strange.

Not the freaky, unusual, odd-one-out kind of strange; more like the strange wherein you're pretty normal but you're a little different than everyone else. Or maybe that's just plainly being unique. I'm not so sure about that, but as far as I know, I'm sure I'm different in a bizarre way.

Every one of my peers dreams to be successful, whether being a businessman, computer scientist or something that involves sitting around in a plush, air-conditioned office pushing paper full of technical jargon. Not me. Sure, I want to be successful, but just not like that. No. I, good sir, I want to wrestle.

Yes, you read it right. I want to wrestle.

The art (it can't rightfully be called a sport) of wrestling first got my attention early in my life, then finally got me hooked in the middle of my teens. It was, at first, more of a, "Hey, that's awesome!" thing to see on TV, until finally I realized, disregarding all those "Don't try this at home" warnings complete with brutal clips of injured wrestlers, that, "Hey, I can do this!" Then the rest became history and I was known to be the wrestling addict (among other things). To get a glimpse of how addicted I was to it, nothing else but wrestling could distract me from the opposite sex.

Basically, it all started with Edge's comeback spear in early, post-Wrestlemania XX 2004. I had been watching Goldberg do it a thousand times before he left but the way he did it never really caught my attention. No, it was with Edge. The whole simplicity yet notable impact of the move became clear to me as this tall, lean, long-haired blonde ran, leapt, and nailed the Bisch in the abdomen. Then I started doing it and threatening people with it (sparingly, of course) until I came to be associated with it.

After "mastering" it, I started to do other things. Leg drops, elbow drops, clotheslines, the basic striking stuff. Looking at my body size, I knew I couldn't get by with relying too much on power moves, so I decided to try out into a more submission-oriented style. I did leglocks (I could proudly show you a figure-four and make the guy scream in pain), ankle locks, armbars, STFs, half and full-nelsons, and the like. Then I found out I could lift my youngest brother, who was notably a lot heavier than I was, to some extent. Feeble spinebusters, sidewalk slams, a rather weak body slam (I couldn't lift him beyond my chest), moves that might come across as chokeslams, things like that. I also began to practice my frontflip/somersault, through which I slowly learned to get over my fear of pain. Of course, I worked out to get in some sort of shape, at the very least.

And damn, I am hooked. I seriously didn't care about the dangers of trying it at home. I didn't care much about pain (at least, I try not to). I dream of following in the footsteps of daredevils such as Edge, Christian, the Hardy Boyz, and Shelton Benjamin, and in those of the master showmen like Eddie Guerrero (God bless his soul), Shawn Michaels, Triple H, and Ric Flair. I dream of wrestling a five-star classic, and I don't care how it happens, whether it's by jumping off of 20-foot ladders or putting on a good 30-minute show.

I want it so bad, I'm willing to go through hell for it. I don't care if the dream sounds too childish.

i suck at endings.

time is on my side

whenever i read fiction about time travel, i can't help but get lost in my own thoughts about how it happens. how come we can go back to a past or forward to a future that is ever-continuing and ever-happening? doesn't time flow just once, or does it have a cycle, much like water?

is there a sub-dimension for every moment that allows it to happen forever, so that we can go to it with some sort of time travel mechanism and alter it? if not for each moment, for each period, decade, or era?

what about the possibility of fractured time? about the difference of time's movement in certain areas? that would make time a dimension, wouldn't it?

but really... is time linear, or not?

(time spiral, i want you now.)

observations

this is a wonderful time to note the power of the blogosphere.

r.i.p. steve irwin. we'll all miss you.

two years. two years!

as of wednesday, this blog has been living for two years now. i was too busy to post on the day of the anniversary itself.

and i'd like to say, what a long way this blog has come. a really long way from the brash style of my young and carefree days. a really long way since the times of insulting teachers. (time teaches you things.) over time and with the advent of lj, this blog has slowly but surely shifted to the deep-thinking, opinionated (wait, it's always been opinionated), essay-ish form you see now. (but at times, trust me to write something personal, either openly or in a cryptic way.)

i also think that i lost some of the old, signature pepi wit (but the law of conservation of mass dictates that the lost wit went to my lj) with my unofficial preference of livejournal. i now aim to reclaim that wit in my future posts.

so, get it through your head, boys and girls; this blog is a long way from dying out. here's to even more years of deep thought to come.

cheers!

seniori-tah

brother leiron posted an entry about seniority in his LJ (it's friends-only, so not everyone can get to read it). the gist of it is, we seniors believe in seniority so much, but are we really that worthy of that privilege? some may use it just to have their way (in a totalitarianish fashion). after a compelling discussion with brother negs about the use of seniority as an excuse for getting into fights with lowerclassmen, the gears in my brain started up. then i went to blog.

recognizing seniority bluntly means respect. why? we have trudged through 12 years of studying in this school. simply put, this is our last dance, we're torn between leaving and staying, and every senior batch should be highly regarded for braving the storm.

we're old geezers. treat us like you would treat other old geezers.

while we're at peace, we will treat you like one of us. it's only when you cross us that things will turn sour. leiron says if we want to have their respect, we have to earn it. 10+ years of loyalty and braving the school are enough credentials for respect.

don't fight us, and we won't fight you. don't malign us, and we won't harm you. it's that simple, actually.

i guess the bottom line is, we're not asking for god-like idolatry here. we're asking for mutual respect, yet with a really little tiny bit of the former. we, or at least i, won't use the word "seniority" as an excuse to spear the hell out of someone. no, i'm better than that. but if some lowerclassman starts the fight, then it's fair game.

school peace, y'all.

panic!

if you would look at the lyrics of "i write sins, not tragedies" closely, there is a moral.

wala lang. hi allie! :P

props

normally, when i hear recent songs under the genre opm, i want to change the radio station. the "new breed", including the latest overplayed songs by callalily and frio (what the fuck is up with your names? callalily is such a sissy name... and your album, destination xyz? are you sure you didn't take a page off of coldplay?), is downright annoying, with everyone trying so hard to sound foreign, with bland yet no doubt inspired rock, (okay, okay, it's a necessary evil) yet ending up falling flat on their faces.

but.

yes, there's a but. magical, isn't it?

but there is a diamond in the rough. kala's "jeepney" is a breath of fresh air, quoting paula abdul, from the stagnant waters that is today's opm. i love its jazz influences (i don't know if i could call it jazz, though... drowsiness is getting to me) and the lead singer's voice fits the song, while probably sounding horrible in other genres.

unless i'm terribly mistaken, (and if i am, please tell me) this is kala's only single as of now so i don't know if their record will be full of the same sounds that defined their "jeepney". hopefully it will, since kala's got something good, something fresh going on. i advise them not to waste it.

on a condescending note, imago's "tara let's" is just plain inane. good voice, but the song is inane.

regarding this blog

it's nearing the two-year anniversary, but things have changed since then.

a year ago this blog was full of life. when i say life, i mean comments were everywhere. now, i said that comments should not be a standard of site traffic, but sometimes, it's the only standard you've got. there's a big difference between just going to this site and reading this site. now i want to know: are you still reading this blog?

so what happened to this? maybe it's because LJ is easier to use and navigate around (maybe you should take this as a word of advice, blogspot staff) and LJ's load times are faster (for me, at least). i've unofficially separated the content of my two journals: surveys and personal life belong to livejournal, and essays/thoughts belong to blogger.

but lately i don't have much will to write here if i'm not getting opinions from others anyway.

so now, i'm contemplating about what to do with this little space of the web. i've been thinking about closing it down and fully surrendering to LJ but there're just way too much memories and sentimental value in this to let go.

ah, life.

the etymology of profanity

since the beginning of time, or human civilization for that matter, society has marked a number of certain words as "unsuitable for a decent person". that list of words varies from civilization to civilization, country to country, language to language, and dialect to dialect. these days you may know some of them as, and i do not censor them, "fuck", "shit", "ass" (to some extent, and when referring to the buttocks), "damn", and the show of rudeness that requires no spoken word, the middle finger.

one can only wonder how they came to be profanities in the first place, as even the rudest of words have a benign origin. for example, we all know that the word "ass" can refer to the donkey, the word "bitch" is the name for a female dog, and you may not know it, but the word "fuck" has its roots in old english (yea, i say, wikipedia does the rest). knowing these facts, it can be assumed that sometime in history, someone in authority branded such words as heretical, derogatory, and whatnot.

what ticks me off is the impact they have on the teachings of the Church. (yes, here i go rambling about religion again. everything seems to amount to it, doesn't it?) i used to go to confession and say that one of my sins was to use profanity, and looking back, i don't exactly see anymore how profanity could be so harmful to one's faith.

a "bad word", alone, is merely an expression of emotion. the thing we have to remember about profanity is that it is not God who brands such words as indecent, but in fact, society who does that job. for example, the word "pussy" originally referred to a cat, right? it wasn't until the modern times that it came to refer to a woman's genitalia. or, if you wish for a less crude example, the word "Jew" became derogatory after world war II, when the word is obviously used to refer to a Jewish person. who started that "Jew" trend? weren't the Nazis responsible for that? Hitler is just a member of a society, just like you and me.

my point is, profanities are not inherently bad. they are bad because it's what society makes of them, meaning, other people just say that they're bad because it's what they were taught. while, okay, maybe i just wrote this so that i have something to justify myself with whenever i curse, although i think that this is something that hasn't been really well thought-out by many.

so in closing, i'd like to say, peace out, bitches.

grieving for the skies

lately i've been playing ff9 on the ps2, and that revived my interest on certain final fantasy oldies. since i know i'm not going to play perennial favorite final fantasy tactics any time sooner, i decided to read the game script and relish in its dubious and bountiful plot twists.

it also contains many different takes on issues and ideologies, usually involving class, human manipulation, politics, religion, etc etc.

so allow me to post an insightful snippet.

Wiegraf: Hya, ha, ha. So much for 'God's miracle'. Governments
falsify history only so it favors them. But you can't blame
them. Because people always hope for a 'miracle'. Endlessly 
complaining, lazy, nuisances... that's what the masses really 
are. Governments give the people what they want...and history 
repeats itself. Governments might well have taken advantage of 
their insecurity.... But then again, people are satisfied
being used.

i know it doesn't make much sense without knowing the context, so forgive me on that. if you want to read the whole thing, just look up "final fantasy tactics" in GameFAQs and look for the "game script" FAQ. (i can't directly link to it.)

back to downloading the ff9 soundtrack. nobuo uematsu is a genius.

you can "keys" my ass

just when i thought i'd have a topic drought within the next few weeks. the news is such a wonderful thing.

part of tonight's entertainment news (both kapamilya and kapuso) is about, hence the title, keys me and its singer, alyssa alano. okay, it's mostly about the singer and how she sung it and less about the song itself. she says, instead of hampering her singing career (or lack thereof), the infamous youtube video (i don't know the URL to it as of this moment) has actually helped her confidence.

i say, "wtf?"

despite the saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity, i'm going to go out on a limb and declare this as HORRIBLE publicity. not just for the aforementioned viva hotbabe who murdered sixpence none the richer, but for the state of the english language in this country. i've rambled on and on about poor english in the philippines, and i swear, this does not help anything.

i guess she displayed a positive attitude by actually raising her head after the fall, but this is the kind of thing that damages a country's reputation. this is the kind of thing that no one should benefit from; this is the kind of thing that should be eradicated from the memory of the public, apologized for, and immediately rectified. shame on you, alyssa alano. shame on you. thanks to the popularity of youtube, the rest of the world may be likely to brand filipino singers as people who butcher foreign songs.

simply put, we shouldn't gain anything good from things like this, save for a message to do something about the state of the english language in this country.

in other news, manny pacquiao is ranked #1 among the veterans. despite being a sellout, one cannot ignore the fact that he still owns. also, ABS-CBN seriously needs to find a way to resurrect the body of ernie baron, since that new guy doing the weather doesn't exactly spell ratings like the walking encyclopedia did.

ooh. i guess i still have it :))

280th

the other day, wowie asked me why i haven't been updating this [blog] anymore. i told him i ran out of topics. aside from coming back home, which i already covered in my LJ, what is new that could be blogged about?

there will be more "bloggable" stuff that are bound to happen, i guess. until then i'll leave you all with a simple thought: every day is a battle.

break with your past

when i was a kid, i read the bible. though i guess everyone can attest to reading the bible, i sort of read it from front to back, skipping the psalms, the prophets, the letters, and everything else that did not constitute "action" to my childish mind. i wanted to read about the war exploits of joshua and moses, the adventures of the apostles, and of course, the perennial highschool favorite, revelations. (i believed it and was scared to death. now, everyone knows revelations is full of poetic symbolism.) somehow i believed every word of what i've read - every if not most children are gullible.

which leads us to the topic: how seriously should the Bible be taken?

mr. kalam (it's funny how everyone cares about him now) quoted a passage from leviticus about eating pork.

"And the pig, though it has a split hoof completely divided, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you." - Leviticus 11:7-8 (New International Version)

leviticus is part of the 3 of 5 books of the torah that deal with the rules. the thing about these "rulebooks", if you will, is that they were meant for the hebrews and judaism. (what do you think bar mitzvahs are for?) and it doesn't take a genius to know that there is an obvious difference between judaism and christianity. therefore that verse or the books themselves aren't required to be followed by us. in fact, scholars interpret the book as a prophecy of Christ's coming.

going back to the Bible in general. i, for one, view the Bible, save for majority of the New Testament, as mostly literature. also, some people take revelations (*coughtruthseekercough*) way too seriously. they take it word for word, not as symbolism. yes, i do agree that in some point in time the world will end, but not exactly as described in the book.

there is also the case of the book of Genesis clashing with the Big Bang theory. i, for one, would not completely agree about Genesis's account of the world's creation, but instead i'll go for the theory of a scientific God. that seems to be the more logical way to go (see the Five Ways).

all in all, the Bible should be revered as both historical and theological, yes, but in some cases it needs to be taken in with a grain of salt.

bullshit dinners and the free champagne

it may be a late subject, but let me cut to the chase:

what is the appeal of Pinoy Big Brother and other shows of its genre?

needless to say, i don't like it. i don't like the "real life on tape" subgenre of reality shows. but if you think about it, that statement is quite ironic, as any other television show with a plotline is, in fact, real life on tape.

for millennia, people have enjoyed watching other people "live" their "lives" behind a looking-glass. from the ancient greek plays on the ampitheatres to today's modern, nonsensical, poor vs. rich soap operas, from old vaudeville to the movies on the big screen, people flock to watch other people go about their lives, be it as interesting as running for your life or as boring as going through a daily routine at a factory.

why?

intrigue, i guess. there's this basic level of intrigue that people don't know they have. people want to know what goes on in other peoples' lives, be it fictional or real. it's enough motivation to turn on the boob tube and see what happens on today's episode of drake and josh, or even simply today's edition of the news. (the news is, in fact, the first-ever reality show on tv. no, i mean, ever.)

going back to the big brother genre. it makes no sense to me to put a number of different people into one house, much less put them on tape, unless you're doing an experiment for the sake of psychology. what the genre does is, yes, take a number of people, stick them in one house for, what, a 100 days, watch the whole scene unfold and see who the public likes the most to win the prize. oh, and while we're waiting for the 100 days to pass, why not throw in a few challenges here and there to spice it up? and the show highlights all if not most of the issues that goes around within the 'housemates' and gives that to the public for them to consider eviction.

i don't know about you, but i feel that the contestants' lives are being cheapened every day they're in that God-forsaken house. if i was in a house like that, i wouldn't go insane over the other people; rather, i would go insane because of the fact that i'm being monitored 24/7. i mean, why would you want to watch me? i'm a real person, i'd rather you watch me when i actually act out. aren't you called nosy when you snoop into other people's businesses? and the networks actually condone this by handing out said life to the public.

i don't know, maybe i will never really understand why the genre is so popular. i probably can't fault its contestants for going out on a limb to win a big amount of money just by living. i just feel that there are better things worth watching than watching a show through the eyes of a security camera and whatnot. better things worth watching than life cheapened.

opm blues

what is up with [mainstream] opm lately? being in a foreign land i obviously wouldn't be able to keep up with the latest native music back at home, but listening to the multitudes of opm downloaded by my brothers, i can't help but wince once i hear them and quickly click next to the who. (i should probably start screening downloads, but that's a story for another day.)

maybe it's because my personal taste for music evolves at paces i don't understand, or my personal inner taste for filipino music only reached the intricate arrangements and styles of bamboo and the perennial old-school rivermaya. (the greatest hits album was all right, though. hi sis.) but everything else, beginning at the opm boom of two years ago, seems to be stale right now.

hale? cueshe? spongecola? 6cyclemind? kamikazee? even the once-different orange and lemons sounds the same as the mold. these guys have seemed to overstay their welcome already. for me, at least. they all sound the same. hale and spongecola are now the standards of bad vocals.

maybe it's really just me and my taste for foreign bands. i don't know. at least i can say my brothers have very poor taste.

[EDIT] as you can see, i changed the layout for a while. previous one's color scheme was a bit too hard for the eyes. i'm still cringing, but i had to do this. i'll probably get someone to make me a new layout, as i hate ripping off of blogskins (though i do have an account there), but i also hate not making my own. guess i must choose the lesser evil. [/EDIT]

most of us have something to complain about

i'm still waiting for the day.

biting the hand that guides

i'm not defending this kid anymore. bashing the closest thing he had to a friend is the final nail in the coffin.

[EDIT] this comment has summed up all of my thoughts about the commenters.

OMFG! said...

CAN EVERYONE PLEASE! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP! tangina.. is this what our batch has come to? tangina.. hindi naman pala si jahan yung may problema e.. kayong mga retarded na mahilig manggamit ng ibang pangalan para makainsulto sa mga kinaiinis niyo. buti pa si jahan, nagpakilala pa. tangina. mga bading pala kayo lahat e.

i'd also like to add another word: owned. [/EDIT]

unfriendly skies

the ongoing battle with jahan and his 405 (and counting) detractors goes on. (by the way, i linked it so that people will hopefully go through the archives and at least try to understand what is up with him. that's a hint, go take it.) though the war has slightly abated, there are still more and more stupid, humorous, and discriminating insults that are even more uncalled for than the post itself, being heaped on top of each other by the sincerely angry and the vandals alike.

thank God for the smarter rebuttals.

taking piccio's theory into mind (second time i linked him, by the way), this whole issue reminds me of a certain episode of CSI. an old man was found dead in the lavatory of an airplane, and this is how he died.

the old man was being a natural jerk to the other passengers of the plane. at first they thought nothing of it and politely asked him to stop, but he kept on being a jerk until the passengers got really pissed at him. push came to shove and the passengers beat the old guy to death as a mob, because they thought he was a terrorist.

but what really happened was that the old man was suffering from a killer migraine due to encephalitis (for those lazy enough to read another page, encephalitis is a swelling of the brain.) and when you get a migraine, you feel uncomfortable. so the old man is squirming in his seat, kicking the backs of other seats, squashing the call button. he gets on a few people's nerves, and unintentionally acts like a hijacker. this is what ticks off the other passengers, and this is what leads to the mob that kills him.

the thing is, this whole incident could have been avoided. and i'll quote gil grissom verbatim:

GRISSOM:  If just one person had stopped and taken the time to look at the guy
to listen to him, to figure out what was wrong with him it might not have
happened.  It took five people to kill him.  It would have only taken one person
to save his life.

see the resemblance to the situation? if people hadn't seen him as a "fat muslim boy" but as a human being just like them, he wouldn't have been so antisocial and he wouldn't have written that entry.

so fresh, so clean

so i guess everybody's heard of the alumnus who bashed the school. i won't link to him here and i'll leave it to you to actually find the blog. his statements are definitely making waves in the blogosphere, he's getting his 15 seconds of fame, and what nice timing as he expressed his feelings after graduation, when he wouldn't be an easy target anymore whilst walking along the halls of the school.

despite that, i am not for him nor against him and/or his statements.

people in the against camp would probably tell me to show just a little school pride. sure, i would. i admit that he really shouldn't have bashed those people like he did, even though he was making use of the first amendment.

i would have wholeheartedly joined the against camp were it not for some of its members. those members who stooped to a level even lower than the perpetrator's when they started making use of his religion and nationality as insults in the comments box. that's no longer school pride; that's discrimination. and when you're discriminating people, i don't want to be associated with you. some are just freeloading this issue to call him names and give him death threats.

so i found it wise to take the neutral stand. i do praise those who have countered the guy intelligently and properly. reassures me that smart people still exist in this world.

[EDIT]i read piccio's take on this issue and i was impressed. taking it on from the psychological angle - and i wonder why i didn't think of that. maybe because i was angry about the half-asses who insult rather than rebutt.

anyway, it might just be a cry for help. a cry because he's been neglected.[/EDIT]

browsing

last night, i was managing the comments in my comments box when i advertently clicked page 10 on the archive. one thing led to another and i found myself reading about the past. i really couldn't help but laugh at some of them. i guess i've just come a really really long way.

for example...

i remember the time when jam got mad at me over lindsay lohan's boobs, when we came up with MKSMA, and the time when my dog bit me. this blog used to be so vibrant when i updated it almost every day.

now i hate to admit it, but i finally will: i (obviously) prefer livejournal for its ease, but there's something about this blog that keeps me coming back to it. i have contemplated closing it at times, but since i've come so far, this one's going to stay.

cheers.