re: connect

got dragged by the dark one to an impromptu trick-or-treating session at pishy's house. naturally, everyone who is anyone who hung out at the gazebo during senior year (except asha, BOO) were there. i haven't seen them in a while, too. i did have fun, though something was amiss, but that's a story for another day.

anyway, i had to leave early to fetch justin. as i was saying my goodbyes to my long-lost friends, i had a short exchange with steph. i basically blurted out that i will see them again soon (naturally, i was uncertain when "soon" actually was in my calendar) and she quickly retorted with, "when is soon? next year?"

immediately i felt a dull pang. dull, but it was there. dull because i knew i would eventually get around to reflecting on it later.

was it really that bad? i suppose it was. i still feel guilty. i kind of felt the frustration in steph's voice as she said it. however, you can't really blame me - it's not easy to maintain high school bonds when there are two el train lines separating colleges where most of the people you grew up with chose to go. now that my mother's not teaching in taft anymore i have less reason to go to taft, unlike last year when i was there nearly as much as i was in UP.

however, this is the risk we all understood by graduating in the first place. we may not have accepted it, but it's there. we will get pulled in separate directions. that doesn't mean we can't see each other again, but the chance goes down like mercury in the north pole. maybe i was just guilty that i didn't actively try and connect with them again. one thing is for sure, though - it was still good seeing everybody again.

as for "soon," well, only fate knows when that is. never despair; it will happen. we just don't know when, but rejoice in the fact that it will happen.

what to do when either goes wrong

i feel a little guilty now. it's sembreak and naturally, the 'birds are restless. leiron has gotten back in the dota groove thanks to his bandmates, and now he's done nothing this sembreak but ask us to play. i can't blame him, though. it's all i can do to help save myself from boredom and get me some much needed camaraderie (college can suck that right out of your life). just so happens we just had two good games, which so happened to get rid of my headache. (food for thought.)

i feel guilty because in the process, i had to unintentionally ignore angelica. well, this is the kind of thing that helped kill my last real relationship, no doubt. and leiron's, too. i suppose boys will be boys. human nature can be blamed, but it's never a good excuse. it never is. the fault will lie on we who fall into temptation.

i guess we'll just have to run with the next time promise. i probably owe somebody a few more kisses. :))

ain't gettin' no younger, might as well do it

this is an official scan of the essay i wrote for the SATs. i just remembered that i can't really let you in on the question (it's in the rules) but i'm pretty sure you can get an idea just by reading the essay. it got me a score of 8, out of a perfect score of 12, with two raters each giving me a score of 4 (naturally, out of a perfect 6). apologies for the unusually unruly penmanship, i was wielding a trusty yet slightly alien #2 pencil.

the topic of my SATs came from a little minor discussion on a forum i habit - you can say they were trying to up each other's scores (so far no one has topped my 1800) so i went back to good ol' collegeboard.com and after overcoming minor amnesia with regards to my password (forgot that i needed to use a number) i saw my scores, and to my amusement, scans of my essay, which you can see up there. i was tremendously amused, although i have this nagging feeling that i've already seen it before, because it brought back memories of that cold december morning in brent mamplasan, where i took the SATs with a bunch of foreign kids. oh, and mel aka lisa. familiar faces always bring relief.

my hopes of the SAT scores still being of some use are still up. it does feel kinda cool and special (the non-retarded kind) to be part of a group of few people here in this country, a land of college-specific entrance exams, who can say that they actually have internationally-recognized scores to boast.

good mornin'.

tonight, out in the street, out on the moonlight

'bout time i raised this guy from the dead, new threads, and all.

it's 1:15 in the morning now and i know i should be asleep, but i just had the craziest idea to revive this. i'm kind of lax on the blogging side now and i think i need an out again. so here i am, reviving this after nine months of inactivity. i only hope that i can keep updating this again - if i do, i'll personally go on a viral ad campaign to re-promote this.

so the homies got together on the on-line side to play some dota. good stuff - took me back to summer of 2006 where the dark one and i would just stay up late (in our respective timezones; there was a 13-hour difference that time) to just practice, practice, practice. actually, he did most of the staying up - while he was up late over here, i was spending it as a fine chicago early afternoon. either way; good stuff. nostalgic. it's been a while since my last true nostalgia kick.

then we wound down with a couple of rounds in the melee. that took me way even further back to 2002. i don't know why, but i love this year, musically at least. it was my personal peak year of the radio. good music, if a little cheesy. warcraft 3 was new, and i, no, we milked it for all it was worth. an amalgam of visual, auditory, and bodily experiences. it's unexplainable, you just had to be there. you just had to be me. you just had to be confined in a hospital for five days and playing warcraft while you were recuperating back home. i don't know, it was a weird yet great experience. something in my brain must've been affected by the dengue.

this is it for now. i'm not in a right state of mind. i miss my angelica.

i promise, my writing shall improve as i go on restoring this (or at least, attempting to) to its former glory. ;)

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Now playing: Nickelback - Gotta Be Somebody
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you hope that he gets what he deserves

this is a week late, but bear with me.

a little over two years ago, in the 13th of november of 2005, eddie guerrero was suddenly taken away from us. the internet wrestling community (wasn't a part of this yet at the time) grieved, and i too posted my grievances on this same blog. but after a while, everyone moved on. the show must go on, like freddie valiantly said. i loved his antics and his matches, but i only knew him through the tv screen. i mention this to people and they always think of the usual suspects, but my hand was at the quick, to defend his integrity because it was public knowledge that the guy had been clean for a good while now.

seven months ago, one of eddie's bestest best friends chris benoit suddenly went all batshit on us and offed himself and his family. why he did that, we will ultimately never know as he's already silenced himself. once again, up to that point, i loved chris benoit both as a person and an in-ring performer, despite knowing him as well through the tv screen, where anything can be distorted. we all believed that he was a good person, and i'm willing to accept that fact just as long as it's not mentioned in the same breath as the june incident. at first i thought he just went totally mental (and that is the general consensus... i think) at the time and shouldn't contribute to his general personality. i also couldn't grasp how people weren't able to manage to separate the chris benoit in the ring and the chris benoit outside the ring, by vowing not to watch any match with a mere speck of benoit in it. but now... i don't know what exactly to believe, and i've stopped trying to pursue that end of the truth.

and then we have heath ledger.

obviously he has barely anything in common with the two wrestlers other than the fact that they're actors (yeah, they're actors) and, well, they're dead, way ahead of their time. but you and i, we know these guys only through a screen. i can't ultimately tell you that chris benoit was either a good person or a bad person, because when it comes down to it, that's not my call. i can't be too sure that eddie was completely clean at the time of his death because there's been evidence of some of the bad stuff a couple of weeks before that morning. you and i can't be as damn sure as well about what really really really went down with heath, beyond the headlines and the dirt sheets. there were pills around his bed, but what of them?

what did we really know? nothing, aside from the fact that he had just finished playing a demented joker in the next batman film (wonder how that's gonna turn out). purportedly he locked himself in a room to prepare for the role. it's the things like this that raise all sorts of silly speculations that distract from the fact that the man is dead. sure, we're all curious, but these days we can never be satisfied with the "how" than with the "why". and it's natural, i guess.

it's possible, yet difficult, to raise speculation without passing judgment. heightened curiosity would be completely tolerable if people would just ask without throwing useless cents in their answers. if he was an addict or whatever-pathic, does it matter? it never dampened his skill in acting. if more people can just manage to do that, then heath's soul could rest in peace. in fact, it would be better for people to be just happy for him as he's free from this life's problems. it's better to move on, for like you and me (unless you were actually a close friend of the guy - acquaintances don't count), we only knew him through a screen, and let's celebrate his life by reveling in what he did in that screen.

rest in peace, heath ledger. if anything, it made me curious enough to anticipate your joker portrayal. i hear jack nicholson is still pretty angry.

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Now playing: Kanye West - I Wonder
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bits and pieces

i'm sorry for neglecting you. now, for the lightning round!

***

the philippines has proved once again that their islands are full of idiots. after heavily griping about being badmouthed on desperate housewives, someone (here) had the genius idea of actually making a movie based on the show! it shows that we're 1) hypocrites, 2) unoriginal, 3) ksp. it would have actually been a genius idea if no one bothered to complain about the initial name-dropping.

***

and who was the idiot who thought manny pacquiao could act? hell, who was the idiot who thought manny pacquiao can host a tv show, especially in his accent?

***

the news is still despicable. i was watching it on new year's eve and they're showing a year-end review of 2007 crimes. and the victims and whoever's related want to see this on new year's fucking eve? the fucking eve of a fucking new year? hello, isn't the new year the prime metaphor for starting over? and they have to remember what they went through? hell, the news is still despicable. don't watch the news.

***

i have this problem with the term "OFW". i don't exactly know what, but i'll get around to it in the future.

***

that's it for today. happy new year, friends.

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Now playing: Chicago - Why Can't We
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crank what?

my brothers are, unmistakably, more immersed in no other stream but the mainstream when it comes to their music tastes, and most of the time it's too much in the mainstream. while i have no problem listening to my own music library (thanks to my own laptop) which maintains a certain distinctness while having some sort of connection (perhaps 30-40% of the contents are similar between the two), i still feel pretty bothered at the direction theirs is going. let's compare.

fall out boy? okay, that's fine. i have my own stash, but only because 90% of my fall out boy content involves kanye west in mash-ups. it's decent. avril lavigne? ew. while "hot" is interesting due to the... well, interesting tempo changes within the song, and while she still puts out a good melody, it's still painfully bland when you listen to it. sorry, dianne.

kanye west? definitely. t-pain, akon? best hook singers at the moment, definitely. but we scroll down to mr. soulja boy tell 'em (yes, that's his whole handle) and here i am, flabbergasted. somehow crank that is way more inane than anything lil' jon and/or the ying-yang twins have tried to put out. hell, i'd even bet that jim jones and his ballin' self is better than this kid. i do applaud him for producing his entire album all by himself, but tell me, is that why it sucks? is the fact that he did his own producing something to marvel at or the cause of his stupid song? i mean, the song consists of his multi-tracked voice... and synthed jamaican-style steel drums. while i love steel drums, it's boring when you get to the first time the hook is sung. or spoken. whatever.

and these are the kinds of songs (crunk and 70%-80% of mainstream hip-hop) that are killing the hip-hop genre. i empathize with kanye when he started bitching that he didn't get any VMAs, not because i think graduation was a magnum opus (the college dropout is still the best one in my opinion), but because he's been working so hard to be different and to rise up against the tide of inane hip-hop songs (even though "golddigger" walks that fine line). i believe he and chamillionaire (go listen to ultimate victory, which, curiously, does not have any profanity. applaud) are leading some sort of revolution, some sort of new wave. the gym class heroes are one of their foot soldiers, the hook singers are their specialists, and the producers, oh, the producers, are their strategists and tacticians.

the mainstream is the mainstream because the mainstream is generally stupid. only a few are barely recognized as diamonds in the rough. here i wonder why they can't be the ones who consistently rack up number one spots. fuck you, soulja boy, your potential is seemingly wasted at the moment - if you rapped smarter, i'd be a big fan by now. and this wraps up tonight's ranting.

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Now playing: Kanye West - I Wonder
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round three

there is a new enemy of the state once again, and this time around, it's mr. jimmy kimmel. another person whom i'm a fan of. not as much as jon stewart, but i like jimmy kimmel's work. he's always been entertaining, especially on the man show. i don't worship him like a god or something but i don't hate him either. i'm just a fan. i like his work.

anyway, the deal is jimmy kimmel made a racist (it sucks to be politically correct sometimes) comment towards us while interviewing josh hartnett, who just happened to finish shooting a movie in davao. kimmel joked with josh that had he been kidnapped in mindanao, we wouldn't be able to read the ransom note because "they probably don't speak english in the philippines."

wow.

for the first time, yes, i am offended by this comment. but! yes, there is a but. because i'm a level-headed person. but 1) i'm not offended to the point of making a death threat, 2) there is some truth to his statement (the truth does not lie in us not speaking english, but us not speaking english right), and 3) i understand the inner workings of comedy enough to take it like a man. because there will always be racist jokes as long as everyone has a little racist inside of them. and when you have a little racist inside of you, you will laugh at racist jokes. not all of them, but you will eventually laugh at one once in your life. hell, most filipinos discriminate fellow filipinos. who hasn't made fun of a visayan accent? or the skin color of an aeta?

so it didn't really take long for me to get over kimmel's statements, because hell, i'm already countering him as we speak just by writing this entry. see folks, this is the better way to profess your anger. drop the pitchfork.

what really bugs me is this tabloid opinion article pertaining to the issue. it's by a certain jojo gabinete, who says he is currently living in the US. mr. gabinete, i'm calling you out. why? because you're an idiot.

you see, mr. gabinete took the time to write up an article to counter jimmy kimmel's comments. of course, knowing the nature of filipinos, when i say "counter", i really mean "talk shit and bash the person". while mr. gabinete does acknowledge the fact that most filipinos are totally "teh suck" at grammar and diction, it is only common sense that surely, this guy knows what he's talking about, and surely, he's better than most filipinos and doesn't suck at grammar. or diction. i don't know about diction but can i just say that his article only made us look even dumber than smarter (by, in fact, knowing how to speak english). the article started out just fine but towards the end, it was already looking like a twisted-metal car accident on the autobahn, and what's more annoying was his self-righteous air, writing all that stuff like he was some poet laureate. fail.

and because of his disastrous english, all his fiery thunder and rage were totally fucked up by him not knowing how to write in grammatically proper english. any american can read your article and tell that it's an ugly piece of writing and tell you that you fucked up your sacred english. so where does that put us now? sure, you did prove that we speak english, but you didn't make us look any smarter, jackass. next time, leave the holier-than-thou act to those who can do it right. and don't publish it on a tabloid, because it screams small-time and irrelevant. sorry, but that's just the way it works.

if you can't walk the walk, don't talk the... fuck it, if you can't even talk the talk, don't talk.

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Now playing: Luther Vandross - Dance With My Father
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down low on the stream

for the past couple of months, i've replaced good, ol' fashioned limewire with the sheer awesomeness that is bittorrents. for the uninitiated, this allows me to download bigger things such as full games, movies, tv shows, and whole albums intact and at breakneck speed. the newest version of limewire finally has support for torrents, but is it just me, or did it also become as buggy and slow as well? either way, i haven't started up limewire for a while now.

now, because it is now possible to download whole discographies without sweating your brow, because it is now easier to download all of that artist's brand-new album, what kind of threat does this pose to the music industry? bigger loss of money, that's what. i will admit that i've already resorted to downloading complete new releases on torrent (save for the eagles' new album, which i shelled out my precious money for). and i'm guessing so have many other people.

but have we really figured out why? why we choose to do it all free, preferring to wait for the download instead of paying for the real thing? especially here, in the philippines?

to anyone who's ever bought any cd save for blanks in their entire life (especially here), the answer is obvious: it just costs way too much.

case in point: eagles new cd ran for P515. good deal, considering that it's a double disc. that's around $11. while full albums run for $15-20 in the states, it's not right to compare, because of inflation. yeah, if you're american or a balikbayan, you'd rather buy these stuff here, but what of us natives? yeah, it just costs way too much.

better solution? re-introduce and popularize the system of releasing singles and EPs. yep. it works wonders - it's cheaper, more accessible to casual fans of the artist, and brings usually more material than an ordinary album would. while not to say that singles are virtually nonexistent in the philippines (the remake of santana's why don't you and i with alex band instead of chad kroeger was released here, and for P250 i think, so that'd be around $6), it's an age-old system that would totally cut down on unnecessary downloads, and it would help the record industry, both local and international. now if you really want to make it appealing, put out singles in flash drives! kanye is doing it, we should too.

another good strategy is to open up an itunes store for the philippines. the folks at apple are real geniuses for coming up with the itunes store. it's a wonderful place on the internet, especially for those who love love music. with the itunes store and a credit card (something also needs to be done about this; teenagers make up a big part of the downloading demographic) you can download that hot new single tearing up the radio really cheap and guilt-free. hell, if you can't bring over the itunes store, i challenge someone in the record industry to make a philippine equivalent. just don't be too tacky with it.

so the next time you see a news piece about the RIAA, and if they're condemning illegal downloads, don't feel that guilty. it's not your fault music is expensive. it is your fault, however, if you do choose not to pay the artist by resorting to illegal downloads.

holiday of the dead

a few observations regarding the state of dead holiday celebrations (that includes halloween, all saints' and all souls' days):

• regarding the state of ayala alabang halloweens, i don't see the logic of all the outsiders excitedly queueing up rather early to get first dibs at all the candy at madrigal avenue, which i shall now nickname 'the strip'. (it seems that the once-rockin' aava halloweens have devolved to being mainly in madrigal, whereas before you can go to any corner and see almost everything lit up. when we went to kuks's house last night, which is in acacia avenue, everything was quiet. either no one really set up for anything major there, or it was already past 7-8 pm... at which time i recall there would still be people, so it's gotta be the former.) i mean, sure the candy is free, but you're not exactly gonna get by on candy! maybe if the homeowners were handing out free cheeseburgers, i'd understand, but this is candy! what's all the hubbub on sweets? i understand that they're kids, but it seems that the parents were the ones pressuring the kids to get candy like it was a survivor challenge. you don't sweat out the mid-afternoon lining up just to get all the candy down the strip! it's just not logical!
• i actually just got back from the cemetery tonight, and let me tell ya, there was a concert, headlined by mymp themselves. the main gripe about this is that there is no sense at all playing a concert in a cemetery. i would completely understand the food stalls but not any concerts. you know how manila memorial park doesn't have concerts on all saints' day? yeah, that's professional. i'm not exactly oh-so-religious these days but i do realize the sanctity of reverence. having a mosh pit (ironically there wasn't one, as the local rock band tanked) does not equal reverence.
• and on to the news once again. i don't know how it happens, but people are dying in cemeteries. very ironic, yes, but i'm sure that the people who died today while visiting their dead never planned on joining them on the days of the dead. what kind of sheer idiocy happens at the really-really-cramped manila cemeteries? it's like we have our own local version of jim morrison's grave! people are indeed really stupid, if people have to die due to stupidity on this day. (and tomorrow.)

there you have it. anyway, i bought the new eagles' album last night. review to come on multiply when i feel like it or when i've listened to enough of it to judge it right, whichever comes first. cheers.

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Now playing: Eagles - How Long
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what i learned today from long lines and industrial-strength ink

so i was forced to vote in the SK elections this morning (learning process. then we're carefree about however we want to vote next time - which is never). the highlight(s) of the whole shebang were an old man humorously trying to join in the line of us SK voters (because, he says, he's "seventeen". don't worry, he wasn't even half-serious), discovering an uncle's long-lost real name, and finding out that the moran family is an amalgam of all the other "it" families in sta. rosa. i'm actually amazed that we're not suffering from inbreeding.

i was also amazed at the fact that i was actually wasting taking some time out to vote for people i barely don't know. my dad told phim and i to vote whoever had "rico" in his name, because apparently he/she was a relative. it seems that while sta. rosa may be a city, it's still not big enough. that or the whole clan was amusingly bigger than i thought it really was.

in other news, leiron and i are world-building for a new fantasy e-novella we're writing (yes, i'm calling it a novella... but only for now). if it goes well, we might be singing to the tune of "we got a hit". good news.

plug: go buy the eagles' new album! quoting will smith, "don't download, go out and buy the record!" for the record, i will personally be refraining from torrenting the album - i'm spending cash, because the eagles deserve to be paid.

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Now playing: Brad Paisley - We Danced
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part two! part two!

have you heard the latest? jon stewart calls cory aquino a slut!

and here i call it once more:

SO WHAT?

i have said earlier that you're not supposed to take desperate housewives seriously. guess what: ALL THE MORE you're not supposed to take jon stewart seriously!

to all of you calling him the "worst comedian ever": have you ever even watched a single damn episode of the daily show? do you know how many times he rags on each and every politician, including dubya himself, in one episode because they fucked up on real news? do you see each and every politician sending him hordes of forum and blog posts telling him to stop it with the damn daily show? no, you don't!

you think he really meant it deep down to call cory and thatcher a slut? you think he's really picking a fight? it's part of the show, people! learn to live with it! he's a comedian, and his political views haven't been more right than any straight political show on tv. all of you who are anti-bush, watch the show and see how he rags on bush, in the funniest ways ever.

jesus, philippines, learn to differentiate the damn difference, i'm getting sick and tired of everyone's all-caps "WE DEMAND A PUBLIC APOLOGY" bullshit. you might as well send a letter to the screen actors guild and tell them to put "don't put filipino jokes in movies and television" in their guidelines.

guess what, guys: i've seen the clip, and i have found it funny. call me whatever, but just by being level-headed, i win and i totally own everyone who wants a public apology. it's funny because it's funny, it's funny because it's not trying to be as tongue-in-cheek as DH was. it's funny because it wasn't trying to generalize on every one of us, it's funny because it was targeting a political figure, one whom we've already targeted before.

oh, and for the uninitiated: the daily show is on comedy central, not on CNN. yeah, you lose, you're owned because you were fooled.

black, white, cuban or asian

so the latest issue tonight is this desperate housewives clip that's making the rounds of the general philippine sphere of internet influence. (i made that up, doesn't it sound cool?) what's interesting about it is that teri hatcher's character makes a racial slur about filipinos (she says a line along the... lines of, "can i check your medical certificate, i just wanna make sure you're not from some med school in the philippines") and now it seems that most people are so much into an uproar that they're forwarding chain messages and they actually have a petition.

all i can say to that is, "wow". and to quote my very good friend mondi, "take a chill pill".

so the writers said a racial slur. from what i've heard, it's not the first time it happened in DH. and besides, DH is a show that is definitely not meant to be taken seriously. have you seen the crazy-ass shit that goes on in it? seriously, folks, if i had a penny each time i heard a racial slur against us on american television, i'd probably have a lot of dollars.

that's exaggerating already, but my point is it happens all the time. not just against us, as i'm sure you know. not that i'm condoning it either, but it's so commonplace that it's not surprising anymore. and besides, didn't jesus tell us to cast the first stone only if we are clean from sin?

point is: don't support this petition, it's just a waste of your time. start petitioning only when you can get miriam to shut up.

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Now playing: The Beach Boys - Wouldn't It Be Nice
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uaap =/ wwe

no, that's not a smiley. it's the "not equal to" sign. i've been trying to write this post for the past couple of days now, and i just couldn't get the groove. now that (both) the ateneo-lasalle series have concluded in our favor, i finally have my thoughts organized. this is mainly about the accusations of game fixing.

the promotion of the two entities may be based on the same principles, down to the heat of the rivalry, down to who's the most over worker in both teams, down to the booking of an ateneo-lasalle game every other day, but at the end of the day, the differences are significant.

you can't book a botched free throw, you can't book a fight breaking out, you can't book each and every foul thrown in the way, you can't book chris tiu not performing his best. it can't be done. it's not possible.

i may be a bit naive in my statements here, i do accept that it may be existent, but i'm too much of a wrestling fan to know what's actually predetermined and what's not. even though i mark hard every time i tune in to raw, smackdown, or ecw, suspending my disbelief.

you can't book it. it's pure skill, pure coincidence that it came to this. you can't book heart.

hey who's to say, you know i might have changed it all / post for allie

this morning allie and i, after our first periods and her cutting her second period, were musing about the direction our college lives are going. as of this moment, i'm failing my kas1 subject (can you believe failing both tests, the map test horribly and the first long exam by a margin - however the term is not over yet and there are still a number of things that can at least save me from a 5) and she's failing her math17 (which is a bigger problem because it's a major in her course). somehow i've decided to accept, with these kinds of grades, that i'm not shifting out sooner than i thought it would be. or maybe even not at all. or maybe shifting but not to the course i had planned to shift to. either way, it's a tough choice.

the thing is, we were musing about how we hated college because of all its pressures (on our oh so fragile first-year selves) and how we wanted to transfer to DLSU because at least, i had gotten in the course i applied for there. we then went from that to thinking about what the hell is gonna happen to our futures this way. strictly speaking and horribly cliched, i want my kids to not live how i'm living right now.

from that, we went to reminiscing about how we didn't have to work our asses off as hard in high school, about how i could sleep in ms. barcelona's class and she would still give me a grade enough to get a third honor, about how we never really had to lose limbs and minds all the damn time back then. what the hell happened? chua's supposedly a DL and we're here struggling the hell through first freaking sem.

i guess we learned a little late that this is, to blatantly steal a tired phrase, a whole new ballgame. this is not high school, my physics teacher isn't sir lasap, my math teacher isn't sir chavez, my english teacher isn't ms. denden. and you know what, it sucks, but who are we to do anything about that? we learned a little late that you're not supposed to just be sitting there when you have to do something.

however, luckily it isn't too late to learn that a completely rejuvenated hustle can still save you. it still could. it's not over.

though, i've yet to learn what i really really really REALLY want to do with this life of mine.

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Now playing: Garth Brooks - The Dance
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beautiful ink part 2

with the invention of the keyboard, the traditional pen and paper has been quite overlooked, and damn, that's quite the shame. there is a certain something in just taking a pad of paper and your favorite pen that writes just exactly the way you want it to write, that feels right as you trace lines and curves on the surface of the paper, and just plain letting loose. screw typing - the real you bleeds out as the ink of the pen.

i once read something from julie andrews, something her husband had told her - to just write and write away, because you can always go back and make changes. i just love letting loose with a pen because with it i am truly candid and there is less bullshit in what i say. if you just wield a keyboard, you can quickly cover yourself up without anyone noticing.

however, the instruments are only one-half of it. for some, rarely does the drive that makes the pen go and your fingers cramp come to them. it's the more frustrating part of the whole process, really. if you always had inspiration, you'd be making millions right about now. or you do have the inspiration but you're too slow to pin it down, and it flies away as another wasted opportunity.

and love can only go so far.

living someone else's life

i just got wind that westlife's covering home by michael buble for their next single. (that would make it the second song also called home in their catalog.) while i respect westlife as a cover band now (they sort of pigeonholed themselves into the category anyway... they did it sparingly and surely early in their career but now they're blatantly turning it into a living - but do listen to their rendition of more than words and all out of love), it annoys me that home became their next target.

why? aside from the fact that i am indeed a big buble fan (and i do see the irony that he also makes a living singing covers, but the main difference is that michael is singing a genre that does call for covers and innovation), they're completely rearranging the song from quiet, chilled love song to a power ballad replete with the trademark westlife backing chorale.

once again, it may be a matter of getting used to, but i don't like it. messing with michael's chemistry is not a wise move, in the case of more mainstream pop artists. this song doesn't need your help.

on the day that i die, i'd like songs to be sung

so i was listening (or more like forced to listen) to the news earlier tonight and they were still going on about chris mendez's funeral a day later. ah, well, who watches the news on sunday anyway? anyway, of course i wasn't paying that much attention (however, his mother sounded like a witch casting an evil curse to the murderers when she talked) but wasn't tuned out completely: i heard the background music, and man, was i both amused and iffed at the same time. (by the way, if you're wondering about what my stand on the whole hazing issue is, i blame the victim - why'd you join if you probably knew that you couldn't handle the haze?)

so the point that i'm trying to drive at here is that when i die and when we're all on the march to the sematary, i don't want the hearse to be playing the funeral home's damn stock, slow, dreadful mourning dirges. no, let's be more creative than that, could we please? i'd want you to feel anything other than boredom in a funeral.

the last playlist:

1. the allman brothers band - in memory of elizabeth reed
2. the who - old red wine
3. tupac - i wonder if heaven got a ghetto or only God can judge me (di naman kasi ako nakatira sa public housing/ghetto eh)
4. alter bridge - in loving memory and/or preferrably, metalingus
5. creedence clearwater revival - long as i can see the light
6. derek and the dominoes - the latter half of layla
7. eagles - already gone (yes i'm taunting ya)
8. queen ft. elton john and/or queen + paul rodgers - the show must go on (MUST be either one of those two versions, nothing else)
9. T.I. ft. jamie foxx - live in the sky
10. U2 - city of blinding lights
11. and lastly, to close powerfully, rush - YYZ

obviously the list is subject to change as long as life goes on and i'm still alive. =))

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Now playing: John Cena and Tha Trademarc - Summer Flings
via FoxyTunes

because whatever will be, will be

at first play, i didn't like queen's innuendo. i thought it was too slow, too crawling, freddie's rough vocals partially wrecking the song (though this would be the case in late queen albums anyway), steve howe's guitar solo only eliciting a meh from me, etc etc. in short, i thought it was a stain in what was a good greatest hits II compilation (next to headlong, but its tempo saved it a little).

but of course, such music that grows on you over time does exist, and innuendo is one of them. maybe my first time hearing it, it was a fleeting moment. maybe i wasn't paying attention too much. first, i gained respect for the classical guitar solo, followed by brian may's own rendition of it on electric guitar. then i gained respect for the very elaborate orchestration. and then i really just loved it for what it is, down from the first note to the lyrics. then i learned it was a tribute to led zep's kashmir. (it does sound somewhat like it. makes it better.) that just took the cake.

so, here it is - innuendo. one of the most underrated masterpieces in the catalogue.

why does love got to be so sahaaad

this morning (somehow i just don't want to sleep yet) i'm downloading the rest of layla and other assorted love songs - which is, like, the songbook of songbooks about unrequited love - while downloading allman brothers band songs (there's a connection between the two, figure it out, click the link, read). they're quite ethereal, perfect for a long night.

anyway, i'll upload the pictures when i regain the gumption to even think about some of them.

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Now playing: Derek & the Dominos - Bell Bottom Blues
via FoxyTunes