Junk Salad

Terribly lacking of better things to say I feel I must terminate April’s havoc with yet another mindless exercise in recycling. Recycling forgotten old entries, that is.

So be it that May sow better things. Meanwhile, crunch on these short junks from the past.

satan doesn't own a freezer
Created on: Dec 30 2005 @ 11:58 AM
not that i'm giving up, but trying to achieve a fun, shitless chat online is like rummaging around hell in an attempt to find an ice cube. yep, that's me. grand patron of skepticism.



the law of natural ejection
Created on: Jan 01 2006 @ 07:02 AM
wouldn't it be fun if someone asks "how was your new year?" and you reply "i have had fun time disposing of the bodies of people who annoyed me last year" matter-of-factly?

if they start running and shrieking towards the opposite direction you know you have eliminated a bore. if they give you discount coupons to rent american psycho and hannibal you know it's a start of a beautiful friendship.



curve your enthusiasm
Created on: Dec 30 2005 @ 09:27 AM
exciting conversations online abound. consider the thrilling one i just had.

chatter: are you gay, straight, bi?
me: are you nuts?

silence. glacial silence.

it's safe to assume i can kiss the possibility of friendship goodbye.


venus is from hell
Created on: Dec 30 2005 @ 09:33 AM
women are desperately seeking for love. then they want brad pitt.


are you retarded?
Created on: Dec 30 2005 @ 11:42 AM
little did i know that the earlier entry on annoying conversation idler such as "are you straight, gay, bi?" would incite amused reactions from people. it only shows how rampant such situation is online. in the interest of unsolicited public service i am compiling a list of possible retorts to such question. when asked, you're armed with a deadpan ammunition.

annoying chatter: are you straight, gay, bi?
you:

• i have genital warts/ebola.
• i'm a mormon.
• i'd be glad to answer that but i fear your head will burst.
• is your mom a lesbo?
• wanna see close up shots of hemorrhoids?
  
• i'm positive for hepatitis/chlamydia/siphyllis/gonnorhea.
• if i answer THAT will you buy avon products from me?
• it is against my religious and moral principles to answer retarded inquiries.
• *quote something from soddom and gommorah*
• i know voodoo.
• this is the fbi online surveillance task force and we're tracking your IP address.
• do you have insurance yet? wanna buy a plan?
• so! what's your view on cannibalism?
• incest is a fascinating subject, isn't it?
• let me describe my prostate examination to you.
  
• can you be my downline?
• have you found Jesus yet?
  

naturally you can bet your rump the conversation will screech into a grinding halt. which is swell, knowing you got rid of one shallow hormone-crazed chatter.

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The Barbra Non-Fan Club

Sacred shit! I failed! I am beyond comfort! How could I be so heedless and sink below THE hollowed standards? I am ruined! Julia Phillips' book You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again keep on flashing like a nuclear leak blinker in my head! (Yeah, even this melodramatic burst is my desperate, pathetic stab at keeping up to feel adequate.) It's a friday night and instead of gallivanting outside having mindless sex and getting my liver mummified with tequila shots I chose what Karen Carpenter would do: play solitaire. While listening to ABBA. I'm kidding! I'd rather hit my gonads with a steel mallet than get my life's decisions done by Karen Carpenter! Truth is I can't listen to a Carpenters song without nursing homicidal thoughts.

You see I have a megalomaniac's ego. Despite glaring evidences I persist on a misguided belief that I am never in lack of self-confidence. This very trait advances my easily-bored-i-couldn't-give-a-flying-fig air which naturally irks cutey-pahootey snots out there. So imagine my seismic shock when confronted with the very proof that yes, I am an inadequate retard.

I was rummaging through shelves of magazines at home and for some sick cosmic joke the forgotten old issue of Tina Brown's defunct Talk Magazine found its way into my (now) outraged hands.

The story that blew a huge splinter in my self esteem : Are You Gay Enough?

In what was touted to be “fresh voice in American conversations” the article outline the preferred and ideal for modern manhood among contemporary women: Just Gay Enough. Meaning the guy should possess all the standard masculine attributes and aspirations but wouldn't wince wearing a salmon tinted cashmere shirt. This article preceded the bizarre demographic-constructing insanity called metrosexual so shut your trap and let my drivel roll on.

Given the daunting standards of the article, I can safely assume and displeased to report that I am not gay enough! What? Me? Not Gay Enough To Make Women Throw Caution Out The Window And Fornicate With Me Like It's The Last Hour Before The Ozone Completely Snaps, Backstreet Boys Release Another Album Or Apocalypse Hits Whichever Comes First?! The writer must have inhaled contraband.

Anyway, this got me into thinking. Maybe it is true.

Many gay people, especially bloggers and guys4men members detest me for self-slapping that dirty word 'bisexual' into my blog. This automatically disqualifies me in the taxonomy of human sexuality namely male, female, lesbians, Michael Jackson and The Rock. If I am to consider the bitching and moaning of true blue gays whenever the B word is sidled in a conversation I must as well be a polygamous Mormon in terms of hypocrisy. Which gives a riotous new dimension to the phrase “Bi now, gay later.”

I'm getting sidetracked.

What I'm trying to hiccup about is I am not gay enough because:

• 01. I can't stand Barbra Streissand. Like listening to The Carpenters/ABBA/Barry Mannilow, Ms. Prince Of Tides ignites my dormant Jack The Ripper to surface. I made a faux pas on this over dinner hosted by a flamboyant friend. Talk shifted to Streissand and a wiseass guest tried to fish out swooning opinions on Ms. B from me. Lubricated by bubbly white wine, I unblinkingly replied “I'd rather gargle Gillettes!” Deathly silence fell like a guillotine and a straight buddy snickered, and in doing so shared my fate as official persona non grata in the host's dining room for life.

• O2.The color pink makes me gag and musicals make my ingrown nails throb.

• 03. Male Armpits disgusts me but a woman's smooth underarms make me imagine rocky road-flavored Popsicles.

• 04. I have a nonexistent gaydar. During a client photo shoot some hags' tongues were twirling like a dutch windmill over the supposed homoerotic trysts of Piolo Pascual and Sam Milby and I matter-of-factly asked “Is Piolo really gay?” to which a loud queen snapped at me: “Ha?!! Ikaw na lang hindi nakasex ni Piolo?! (What? You're the only guy Piolo hadn't had sex with?).”

• 05. Women very much turns me on and I get turgid looking at pictures of Eva Green, Emanuele Beart, Sophie Marceau, Monica Belluci and Mayumi Cabrera, a proposition that sends shudders of revulsion up the spines of my gay friend.

I can go on and on in what you snots may call a Denial Spree but it's almost three in the morning. I will continue the list if the mood suits me. Meanwhile I need to hit the sack. However, negative nellies, you have ammunitions to discredit me. Four words:

Marcus Shekenberg.

Travis Wade.

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The Scourge Of April

Unhappiness seems to have polluted April abundantly, farther than it intended to wreak, I must add. T.S. Eliot, in Wasteland, incriminated April to be the cruelest month and given all the tales of despair, personal and otherwise, I am prone to agree with him. People I know in real life (and what I gathered among online friends) confess to moments of despondency. A young poet drowns misery in temporary escapism of alcohol, another one braces for untidy anguish of marriage annulment with nobility and quiet misery. Two other friends have had brushes with eviction and the same threat dangles above the head of another acquaintance. Everywhere I look I see sadness looming, loyally waiting for a prospect to sink in. Yet sadness overlooked humanity's deep reserves of tenacity. Refusing defeat we try and dismiss its presence, move on with a brave face. Inside, in silent hopefulness, we mumble the unspoken prayer that we will outwit its relentless pursuit. We quicken our strides and dissolve into anonymity in the hurried pace of the evening crowd.

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Drought

Dear E,

Drought arrived without preamble. It came out of nowhere, an intruder puncturing the stillness of things with cunning and stealth of a kingfisher that plunge upon the lake, burning with malice and hunger.

It caught me unaware. My thoughts reeled, my composure scattered in every direction like yellowed leaves being plucked by fury of unsympathetic north winds. Blankness soaked my waking hours and I tally every dissolving minute into restless anticipations of midnight when tiredness and emptiness finally submit to slow gravity of sleep.

April has almost left me speechless. Pages I need to fill out remain empty and I have seem to have lost my grip and self-assured reins on creativity. Even my freewill remain motionless like a dulled heart that seemed to have given up, forgetting even to dream.

Storms abound and voids outline the hours like constellations looking for proper orbits to occupy. This is when I miss you the most and your perpetual absence that scrapes craters in my core. I can't help but ask: Are you thinking of me in equal frequency the way I do about you?

This cheerless state of affairs I’ve sinked in this month defies description. I wish I can just walk into your kitchen, poke my nose inside cupboards, rummage for something delicious to perk my spirits with, or, simply sit beside you watching reruns and breathe freely.

We both know this is mere wistfulness on my part. The distance bisecting us is not simply geography. We have drifted into dissimilar lives and only faint voices of each other occasionally surface to remind us of those midnight whispers, bedtime geometries, vocabularies of endearments populating a language that is entirely our own.

When deep reveries of you touch my vacant stares a smile would sprout in my mind and warmth would permeate my saddened self. I would harken back to Christmas morning eight years ago. I remember it well like the full wakefulness of noontime: I stirred from sleep and beheld sunrise bathing your face in luminous glow. I marveled at the ghostly trellis of shadows your long lashes have conceived, brushed like delicate calligraphies in protrusions of your closed eyelids. It was a lovely moment. I think my heart skipped a beat and I kept that splendid memory private, unspoken of, even to you.

Nowadays I am struggling to make every single day mean something but circumstances are less compassionate. Yet I forge on, floating, kicking my feet below the water in stubborn gasps for endurance. I sometimes slide into defeat and skepticism but my irrepressible determination always swerve back into blurry glints of optimism. I sometimes wish I’d plod on easy streets and live an easy life, but that would do me more harm than good.So I persist, despite of inescapable times of momentary weakness.

However, there are afternoons when I felt like I am standing in a hall filled with junk drawers spilling over with overlapping choruses of remorse, exasperation and guilt that would pour out and scatter on the floor. Again, in a time like this, I would think of you. Your giggles. Your mixed tape masterpieces. The way you would ignite a room into sudden explosion of buoyancy just by flashing a smile.

Beloved E, I wish I have the patience to absorb your relentless positivism, especially during trying times when horizons never cease to alternate between blue and grey. But of late, my attempts and determination are constantly assaulted, eroded, and nothing seems to help. Even silence draws me more into pensiveness than clarity.

When evening arrives I feel like one of those crumpled widows, who after a love is gone, sit in porches, behold the infinite sky, drink in the ecstasy of distant years and whisper:

“I used to be fine, I used to be beautiful.”


Remembering you
in ways words cannot substitute,
Loudcloud

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You, Assassin

Irrespective of how successful, how uncomplicated your life is, a certain restlessness arrive in tiptoes and when an opportunity presents, shoots up shudders of dread and doubt into the very nucleus of your deepest, most secret insecurity.

The list would reel in your mind in multiple shadows of panic, regret and loss:

What if you let true love pass you by? What if you didn't recognize it smiling warmly in the laundromat, cordial in the hallway, indecisive among the pile of lettuce in the grocery, staring far and lost in thoughts in the airport lounge, approachable in the frenzied food court, because you are blinded by the pursuit and fail noticing it when it's staring right back at you?

What if all these years you misconstrued the true one with convenient substitutes just because the substitutes were around at the precise moment of your most yearning hunger?

What if you've had it in your hands but were too foolish to honor its presence because even if you do your kisses were empty and you embrace while wishing your arms were longer? When you endure tepid conversations over a cosy dinner while your eyes dart from the cutlery to the doorway in anticipation of a dashing trade up to walk in?

You see this is a dilemma I suspect happens to all but have refused admitting to. You fall into clutches of tenderness with same simplicity as unraveled leaves drifting in the gentle hum of summer breeze. It is an annoying habit, a compulsion, like a noble, earnest pup too enthusiastic to beget affections.

You would be inching in crowded trains, and, emerging from a reverie, spot someone. Waves of warmth for that person would kick in like violent surge of waves on the torso of thoughtless shoreline rock. You would begin to roll the reels of probabilities in your mind and they become vivid images of dancing, selfishly choreographed in your head: what would it be like to have meaningful conversations with this person? If you run out of conversations would silly ones do and still not lose a beat?

Is this recognizable? You sit in a bus, overwhelmed by timidity, and censor that strong inclination to spark a conversation. You sense a strong connection with the one next to you and you shift restlessly because even the most innocent brush of skin wires your consciousness with shivers of electricity. You sense that the object of your enraptured attention is furtively waiting for blinking signals like a vagrant fisherman would for a lighthouse on moonless midnights. But you allow logic to override your instinct with fabricated excuses of personal space and the right to be left alone. You begin to nullify the rising billow of feelings by flashing scorecards of impossible requisites and ideals.

So you sit there, basking in the fierce gush of warmth and nip its germinating bud before you make a fool out of yourself. You get off the corner of your stop, cast one glance backward, and mourn.

You walk on, hollow, consoled with the familiarity of convenient substitutes.

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Silence Among Other Things Crowding The Days

Dear E,

Exhaling in relief these days is nothing short of picking with chopsticks the beads of pearls swimming in a bowl of grease.

In times like this your lovely face floats from my memory and I think of you as you sleep warmly pillowed in the arms of another love while I toss and turn like paper boat quavering in brutal tides of a rocky stream.

I cannot even begin to flesh out the cocktail of frustration, despair, disappointment, betrayal and letdown crowding my professional and personal life these past few months. There is, however, the soundless ache, a dimly-lit corner I inhabit in moments of meaninglessness.

Silence.

Silence is a fate worse than wearing strings of misery, a necklace of grief. It is more vicious than a stab in the gut, wounding and leaving without a footstep. Silence is blindness in another guise that walks around in a foreign name. It is easy to weather furious cyclones of angry yells but silence is altogether a deceptive terrain to navigate. It is always pregnant with unsolicited mirages. It is an unforgiving mirror in which we discover our concealed fears. It is terrifying, menacing, a province we have no clout over.

How do you truly cope with silence? How would you gather your thoughts in a place shivering with soundless tremors of self doubts, rage, and hopelessness? Is it why we flee towards superficial, noisy nightspots? To drown the howls of our self-defeating selves?

What else can I say to you now except “It’s beyond difficult these days?” The more I ponder on life the more I become ever more nostalgic of the plainness of my childhood. Oftentimes I catch myself resenting the curse of adulthood, the trappings of indebtedness swimming alongside it's very nature. I begrudge being responsible for the sake of those who rely on you for unfaltering decisions and directions. I get weary of being a man whose reason to desert the comforts of bed in the morning is a strong sense of obligation. And for what? If there is a prize being handed out for perseverance and courage, then I'd hate to be pushy but I want to have my hands on it now.

On clear summer afternoons (like what we had today) I didn’t see forever like a song lyric would go. I saw glimmers of my own inadequacy laced with a nasty sneer of uncertainty dressing up for a field day. I am not giving up, however. You, of all people, are aware of my persistent nature and it is difficult to convince me out when my resolve is wedged firmly into a certain dream. Forgive me if I sound less and less optmistic. I did not write you to uncork a river of complaints. I did not write with intent of flooding your neatly-organized life with details of my personal woes. I am writing because maybe, just maybe, if I commit these thoughts into words they wouldn’t sound so bad after all. Only then I can exhale. Only then I can shrug my shoulder, and anticipate another sunrise with prayer and vigilance for an intangible smile to punctuate this seemingly messy day.

Humorless and weary, Loudcloud

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Blunders

Best intentions, no matter how you undertake to have favorable endings, are prone to the cruelty of unwanted disasters. It would be easy to slide towards self-righteous protests of innocence, especially if the blame resides outside your control, but that would still be suspect. I wouldn’t make any excuses. I wouldn’t assert the fact that I have misplaced my confidence based on repeated assurances of people I thought wouldn’t let me down. The sad affair certainly now adds a resonant learning dimension to that age-old expression that if you want to get things done right you have to do it yourself. Too late; it happened: the unthinkable. What was planned to be an evening of fun got assailed by stress, embarrassments, frustrations, disappointments and that catastrophic end of having to take the blame regardless of situations I didn’t anticipate. I take responsibility and own up to the misfortune that ensued.

This is quite vague for those who are not privy to the event but let me say this in all sincerity: I am truly, regrettably sorry for the miscommunication. I am sorry for having to mire the credibility of the one person who deserves to be happy that night yet ended up in a very discomforting spot. I am sorry that I have to ruin the mood for all concerned. I am sorry that I have failed on this. More than assigning blames or demanding an accounting for all the trouble I am kicking myself. Harder.

There is nothing I can possibly say to make up for the sour episode. I am not going to utter a defense. I am asking for earnest apology.

And it is my fondest optimism that in a better time you’d all accept it.

~~~

Also, to everyone leaving a comment here, I'm sorry things are very tough at work and I don't have that much luxury of time to respond or blog. I'll be back in full blogger mode soon.

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