Is She? Is She?

Convulsed with laughter. Great One, Amateur Misanthrope!

Meanwhile, misterhubs, I am alarmed that you are becoming more right about Chet and DILF Frank of Hardy Boys! Hahaha. Remind me to steer clear of your hyperwarped imaginings.

~~~

Let it be said to quash all the moanings and bitchings about me avoiding people...

YES, I am avoiding EVERYONE even on YM because I have to pour undivided attention on gasping projects floating in limbo. Even in avoidance I am democratic. Hehe.

Don't even remind me of the unfinished work that gripped the newly-moved in flat.

I'll go berserk.

~~~

Dear Mali,

First, he'll wince. Then he'll dwell on the sting for ten minutes. Then he'd shrug and hum Ben Folds Five's Last Polka especially:

My, my. . .
the cruelest lies are often told
without a word
my, my. . .
the kindest truths are often spoken,
never heard

she said,
"you've been pushing me
like I was a sore tooth
you can't respect me
'cause I've done so much
for you."
he said, "well, I hate that
it's come to this, but baby,
I was doing fine
how do you think that I
survived the other twenty-five
before you?"

Be well and be happy. In your happiness you'll look back at all these things and be kind.

Read More......

Give

Don't be a selfish snot. Extend a hand!

Read More......

Drifting

Contradictory to even my most conscious denials I am, possibly, already becoming fond of you. Self-respect will always dismiss the ridiculousness of this silly thought. But how else can I explain sliding into sleep at night and the last thing I could muster is a coy half-whisper circling every syllable of your name?

How can I ever justify the jealousy nibbling on my earlobes at the thought of someone else tousling your hair?

How can I commit into words the mad, territorial greed that clouds my mind every time I start imagining fingertips other than mine that glide across the length of your spine?

How can I ever dismiss the warmth rushing in when I hear Elton John’s Your Song and everything liquefy and my thoughts drift towards you?

Apothecaries have no antidote for this mortal affliction. The best I can hope for is to long for a day when this brewing madness dissipates into mere schoolboy crushes, and all will be well in the world again. For me, at least.

For the time being your lopsided smile continue to unrest me.

It’s piercing, this troublesome feeling. Its a form of cruelty: much like catching a glimpse of a lovely face in crowded trains, and, after the overwhelming exhilaration of sudden attraction subsides your heart sinks into despair knowing it will be the last time you’ll ever gaze at such loveliness. This is where my thoughts pitch their tents: the joy and ache of meeting you, of not knowing you profoundly enough before we both retrace our steps back into the neat compartments of our respective lives, struggles and dreams.

In parallel universes there will be a little footnote in the great volumes of What-Could-Have-Beens. It will be about me having the courage to deal with your sly, deep, piercing gazes. Gazes that make me lose grip of my arrogance, gazes that come arrowed with smiles.

It is a difficulty I am too proud to own up to. It is a difficulty I struggle to forego.

Or, maybe, it’s just how it is.

We are all captives in the constancy of wanting. Whether it concludes on tragic or happy endings such hunger will always administer to wound you.

If it doesn’t, then it’s not true.

Read More......

Abdoabomination

Synchronicity is not in my glossary these days. Not only do I engage simultaneously in disparate things, my unconscious deeds seemed like that of a confounded parakeet shoved into wandering aimlessly in a Max Ernst canvass.

Incoherence is hysterical. Unfunny if it concerns yourself.

To illustrate how hilariously disjointed things are:

Wading through the unsorted junk littering the newly-moved-in flat I discovered among the stack of dusty boxes a forgotten ABSculptor. This nefarious instrument was abandoned in my apartment like Stork droppings by an irresponsible cousin. It has been with me for seven years and it’s only just now that I dredged up its elapsed existence.

I gave out a hearty, insane laugh upon unearthing the equipment of torment. Like the similarly torturous Nordic Rider Bike which I bought some nine years ago, both implements serve no practical purpose but double as unintended vacuum cleaners. They have been magnetizing dust to put a Dyson blushing. I fear both have developed independent lifestyles by now.

Not that I need the dang ABSculptor at all: my abdominal area has no extra ounce of unwanted flab. But I am warped, so after the hearty chuckle I said, why in hell not.

I stripped down to my whitey white undies, lied on my back in the parquet floor and eased my neck into position and started pulling and kicking. But before I did the mid-body flexes I flicked a button on the stereo controls and the School of Surrealism commenced:

How many pseudohealthconscious people out there do abdominal crunches to blares of Tears For Fears Greatest Hits?!! Hahaha.

And the odd thing was I didn’t notice I was doing abdominal bends and simulated mid-air bicycle kicks while Sowing The Seeds Of Love and Everybody Wants To Rule The World dilute the pungent air of the room (a hired help varnished the parquet yesterday and it hasn’t completely soaked in the wood surface, ergo the mummified smell, and here I am, shirtless and lying on the partially sticky surface. How deranged is that?)

I realized I am working out to illogical soundtrack somewhere between the chorus line of Woman In Chains and Everybody Wants To Rule The World.

So I flicked the remote again to switch the disc (my trusty 50+1 CD changer proves its merit once more).

Hillary Hahn’s Bach Concertos drenched the air. Just great: amplify the Salvador Dali moment! Too preoccupied by the splitting sensations in my stomach as I continued the crunches Daniel Hope’s Bach immediately followed Hillary’s. Which jumped into The Jayhawks Rainy Day Music, which jumped to Viktoria Mullova’s Bethooven-Mendelssohn’s Violin Concertos, Which jumped to Nelson Freire’s Chopin & Villa-Lobos, which jumped to Interpol’s Antics.

The music accompanying the impromptu abdominal work out will give an onlooker a Rene Magritte moment.

Not me.

I was too busy yelling obscenities in between gasps for air every time the blasted ABSculptor rips and shreds my stomach into kingdom come.

Read More......

Fünfzig *

“Talent borrows;”-a distorted brainiac once famously announced-“Genius steals.”

In the same vein I will rip off misterhubs' most recent entry because despite all the insane incidents and universe-realigning original topics swirling in my head (maniacally winking to be blogged about) I, for (bleep!)'s sake cannot muster to sit five minutes in a row without getting butt blisters. Add to this chronic restlessness my occasional impotence in the coherence department. I would sit with a germ of an idea that will no doubt mature into a monumental literary opus and my generally-dormant but irresponsible wart of a mutant chromosome starts kicking in and my thoughts would disperse like Paris Hilton's IQ at the Hollywood Mensa bureaux.

This entry is also mired by unblushing narcissism because my drivels got casually wedged in his list--the mere mention of my blog elsewhere gets me sexually aroused. I begin to get turgid and my lungs constrict, my breathing gets labored as I reach for my...

Ok, let's not go there.

I also have an excuse: I want to distract my mind off mind because if I dwell on the fact that my newly-moved-in flat remains a striking dead ringer of Kabul after the great American sodomy I'd sooner go stark raving mad. Compounded by a series of homicide-inducing dustups with a consultant to a client over an ad campaign last week, I am increasingly prone to waving at members of the clergy with four fingers bent. That, or start open-firing at a Rotary Club convention. Or start knitting spindles of dental floss into miniature flags of member states of the United Nations while humming a gravelly Ray-Charles-meets-Macy-Gray-on-speed before hitting the allegro molto crescendos of It's A Small World After all.

You get the drift.

Fifty random things I like:

01. Oversleeping. Sadly, this activity hates me back because I'm not getting enough of it.
02. Brilliant Warpedness - Dilbert, Krazy Kat, Cathy, The Far Side, but one will get a special billing:
03. Calvin & Hobbes.
O4. Mcflurry. (a toss up with Cookies & Cream flavored ice cream)
05. Mangoes.
06. Brilliant Warpedness 2 – David Sedaris, Cathie Pelletier, Dave Barry, Mike Royko, Erma Bombeck, The Gangster Of Love, Woody Allen, The British Version of The Office
07. Music. EXCEPT: all those Wimp Rock “I Hate Myself I Wanna Die” EMO Shit; “Woe Is Me I Am Bluer Than Picasso's Series That I Wanna Overdose On Prozac” country music; the vaginal shrieks of Celine Dion, (sorry attorney hubs!) Mariah Carey, and the retardation conducive sounds of Shania Twain, Britney, Hanson and Backstreet Boys.
08. Sarah Silverman.
09. White boxerbriefs.
10. Downy white sheets.

11. Books.
12. Magazines: The New Yorker/Atlantic Monthly/Radar Magazine/Adbusters/The Believer/McSweeney's/(the now defunct) Zembla Magazine/ 032C/Matador/ Domus /Casa da Abitare/ Wallpaper/Monocle
13. All Cameron Crowe films. Yes, even the calamitous Vanilla Sky.
14. Nick Hornby
15. Maison porn: Vitra, Capellini, Herman Miller, Artek, Philippe Starck, Tord Boontje, Bang & Olufsen, Rose Lovegrove, Yves Behar, Ron Arad
16. Fierce Modernists: Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Santiago Calatrava, Renzo Piano
17. Indie films.
18. Scalding hot showers after a nerve-grating day at work.
19. Waking up to very soft music in the morning.
20. The TV series, House, M.D.

21. The color blue.
22. The mind-bogglers: Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler, Paul Klee.
23. The Sixties. (No, I wasn't born during the sixties. If you are in the creative industry you'd know what I mean.)
24. The Thursday Group! (pronounced Tars Day by the German Moreno School Of Mangled Phonetics) Fatima Alvir Forever! Nyahaha.
25. Seiko Films.
26. Scrabble.
27. A great argument.
28. Laughter.
29. Striking up hysterical conversations with complete strangers in foreign airports.
29. ZOMG talking fruits!
30. skinny neckties.

31. Clear summer afternoons.
32. Splash of androgynous CK One on women, Hugo Boss on men.
33. Seafoods
34. The poetry of Sid Gomez Hildawa, Rilke, Neruda, Lourd de Vera, and Angelo Gelo Suarez
35. Contemporary fiction.
36. Scandinavian/Nordic Design.
37. Swiss typography.
38. The vibe of Tokyo
39. Piquant Antics: ian's, misterhubs, datu, coldman, q, agentboytoy, xienah, cofibean, kwentongbarbero, noisy noisy man
40. The mind-melders: Freud. Kafka. Chekhov.

41. Deliriously slow, sensual fuck.
42. The sudden rush of connection with someone.
43. Hearing 'Thank you,' 'I'm sorry,' and 'Apology accepted.'
44. Lancing the touchy-feely, fragile egos of idiots.
45. The mobile phone not ringing on weekends.
46. Horse-back riding.
47. Pedaling downhill a steep slope with the brakes acting up.
48. Seeing a smile race across the face of a cynical client during tough concept briefings.
49. Smart, funny people.
50. Brilliant Warpedness Part Trois: Daria, The Simpsons.

50 and a half. My new ex-next door neighbor.
50 and three fourths. Beer.


* Fifty if I do Gestapo Speak

Read More......

A Is For Avocado, Apathy, And In This Case, Amentia*

Pearl Jam was the paste.

“I love Pearl Jam,” you blurt out, and before you can further accessorize such declaration of worship for the brilliant drawls of Eddie Vedder (who ranks as one of the Rock gods in my book) my head began spinning. In a blinding flash my over-agile imagination immediately constructed lewd landscapes. Words like bed, sex, you, me, destiny swirled like windmills that went haywire in my carnal mind. I used to steal probing looks at you when I thought you were unaware I am staring and all I saw was a magnetic face. Beautiful but shallow. Uncomplicated but attractive—too attractive for comfort for mortals with shaky self-esteem. Too attractive enough to reduce others into feeling like fungal mold standing next to you. But your abrupt declaration on Pearl Jam pulled the rug under my conceited feet. It made me look at you in different light.

Suddenly a combustible crush crept up my spine, and realizing it's infantile manifestation, I shivered. I shook my shoulders to ambush the ridiculous thought, before it germinates into something terminal. But who am I kidding: your gorgeous face, the easygoing charisma and suddenly, Pearl Jam. Love.

But being me, self-preservation prevailed. My alert defense mechanism sprung into knee-jerk cynicism and self-annoyance slapped my smitten daze back into sobriety. This happened in split-seconds before I totally slide into irretrievable pits of fatal absurdity. Apathy and mild disdain demolished the sudden awareness of your newly-discovered charm. Yes, I was a prick. A qualified idiot. A self-defeating schmuck who had the last shred of restraint to save us both from ourselves.

~ ~ ~

This drivel was inspired by this album:

which I rediscovered among jumbled mountains of CDs randomly tossed like a salad by the charming hired hands who helped me moved into the new flat. The CD was intended to be a holiday gift for the subject of this blog entry (who also happened to be one of the more recent friends). However we drifted away a couple of years back and the CD remains a pristine, sealed duplicate of the album I already own.

It will remain that way, a dust magnet, eating space.

* idiocy, retardation

Read More......

Dreadful Departures

Reluctance, sadness, acute nostalgia—they grip me as I finally say goodbye to you. We have been together for eight years. Eight ripe years! Given the shelf-life of Hollywood marriages our shared number of years together borders on the naïveté and endurance of old fashioned romance. So it is with pinch of melancholy that I will be moving on, leaving you behind. I felt the wave of embarrassment floating up my nose like a flagrant lover diminished of gratitude and devotion.

Farewell 25th floor, Unit (X).

As I move many many floors up, I glance sideways and I can see, lucidly, as if for the first time, speckles of stories soaked by your fading walls. Beautiful stories, heartbreaking stories, carnal stories, insane stories, hilarious stories, tender stories, and stories laced with secrets, malice and lust. I will carry every unwritten word of these memories with me.

When I finally close the door, and twist the knobs to seal your emptied rooms for the last time all these fond remembrances will come rushing back like ignited fireflies swarming a tree branch in the calmness of midnight.

I will remember the struggles I’ve had some years back when I was in-between jobs. Those bleak times of pork and beans and toasted bread weeks in a row because I was too proud to call home to bail me out.

I will remember tossing and turning past three in the morning either pining over a beloved or outwitting the potent spells of insomnia over difficult deadlines that make me have self-doubts about my professional worth.

I will remember casual encounters and the rush of guilt and regret when morning arrives and my lungs are reminded of stale sex clinging on the sheets.

I will remember quiet moments when I lay on my back on the cold parquet, staring at the ceiling with very soft music soaking the deep joys of solitude.

I will remember the excruciating moments when editing the perpetually growing number of books, CDs, DVDs, magazines that spill over the shelves and the agonizing option paralysis over what to cast out and what to keep.

I will remember the accidental brushes with voyeurism when I flung the canvass curtains open and beheld the next-door neighbours fucking like crazed rabbits with their lights burning bright and their windows wide-ajar like the legs of a two-dollar whore.

I cannot even begin to imagine the copious volumes of books I can write about our time together and maybe, if things conspire to be so permitting I may start that first page.

Such is life, though. We have to embrace even the most awkward of changes. But life itself cannot expunge these memories. Memories define us. They will sit quietly, waiting for the precise opportunity to spring back to mind and unfold a smile upon our face.

Farewell 25th Floor, Unit (X). It is my fondest wish that your new occupants will dwell in you with deep affection in the same manner you have been kind to me in the rich expanse of those eight beautiful years.

Read More......

Suffer The Suffrage

Vote! Come on, vote! Like you’re getting paid to do it, dagummit!


And join in like the suspension of your very own mortality depends on it!

Thank you!

Read More......