eloquence

lately i've been talking in speeches.

whether i'm proving a point or just making fun of someone, i break into a speech. it's not your typical martin luther king jr. speech, but more of a "wrestler-inside-the-ring" speech. i think it's fun, and good training for the future. who knows if i'll make it as someone's manager - it's as likely as being a 'rassler itself.

in other news, the soujourn in the warbirds' nest was really fun. one warbird is in trouble, and the others must back him up.

level up

experience, the wonderful thing we gain as we live life day to day, is meant to be cherished and remembered. experience teaches you things that might come in handy in the future, because experience is easily considered by many to be the best teacher around (next to sir cortel, that is). a wise person is wise because of experience.

so why didn't zobel, or rather, its administration, in all their wisdom, learn from experience?

two years ago, a learning system known as the LCLE, where a certain topic is integrated into almost everything, was snuck past us and shoved down our throats for a trial run. it was unanimously decided that it never worked and no one, student nor teacher, liked it at all. sure, we were sports and decided to give it a try back then, but only because we did not know que horror.

so everyone got a brief respite last year. we thought that was the end of it.

but no. despite initial negative reactions, the Great Minds^TM that run zobel have soldiered on and further insist to shove the much-maligned system down our throats once more, this time in full force. here we are back again to the many complaints, whines, and death threats that the horrible system has spawned, and i agree to each complaint without hesitation.

we have given it ample time to try and make converts out of us, but that didn't work back then and it doesn't seem to be working now.

rumors go around of teachers planning to quit because of the sheer stupidity of LCLE, and there's been already one confirmed report (i won't tell you who it is, though). no one wants to use it, no one wants to do it. it's simple.

to The Powers That Be^TM, are you blind? deaf? do you not hear the groans of your students? do you not see the utter disdain on their faces? what exactly is it do you plan to prove?

mr. evp has lost all credibility amongst the student population. that, my friends and readers, is a fact, and not false slander. this won't be the last thing you're gonna hear from me about this issue; nay, this is just the beginning.

i dare you to come get some.

big III

today marks the last CET out of the three i'll be taking here in the philippines, if you don't count SATs (by the way, i need help on this one...in all my wisdom, i have no damned idea how to set myself up to take the SATs. somehow and unfortunately, i have become dependent on ms. isidro). out of the big three, UP was the one wherein i went all-out, because i couldn't care less whether i pass or fail green and/or blue.

why is this the case? so that if ever the 2% chance of me not leaving after all completely owns the other 98%, i'd be in the school i really wanted to be in before i realized that i want to make it abroad.

there could be a million reasons why that might happen; either paperwork gets through or because of obligations i must remain dedicated to (right now, such obligations are nonexistent). a lot can change in the course of a year, much less a number of months; this is exemplified in wrestling, wherein we may never know if DX could split up next month or someone like randy orton might become champion from under our noses next week.

as jr says in one of his most famous lines, "anything can happen in the WWE!"

oh, i've gone on too much again =)) technically, we can replace "the WWE" with "life". you never know if you're going to survive to see tomorrow (but of course, there's a high chance you will) or you never know if i'm going to end up with a new girl this time next week. (hmm... do i even want to?)

ah, well. 'til next we meet, kinsmen.

dementia paradox

i've discovered that i've been quite forgetful lately.

i think of something to do or say, but just distract me, throw me off-tangent even for a while and i lose it. "ano nga ulit yung sasabihin ko?" seems to be my new catchphrase. sure, i will get it back after a few seconds or minutes, but the mere fact that i forget what it was i wanted to do or say scares me. what if it worsens? what if i get alzheimer's when i grow old?

funny thing is that my brain allows me to reach far back into my childhood and deep into the recesses of my mind to dig up trivia, but i can't even remember what i was thinking about five seconds ago.

if i'm getting alzheimer's, i'd rather that it comes as an after-effect of 20-foot leaps, not something that's slowly taking over from out of nowhere. ah, well.

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.