dear stan

dear stan,

I don't really know how to tell you this, but I'll join the monastery. I think I realized it when we skinny dipped at the mental hospital and carved your initials into my father.

I'm sure you're scarred enough to understand that Extreme Home Makeover sucks.

I'm returning the couch cushions to you, but I'll keep your suicide note as a memory.

You should also know that I always will remember our friendship.


your everlasting enemy,

-mean-

[ Do it like this ]

Dear (the person who last texted/messaged you),

I don't really know how to tell you this, but ___1___. I think I realized it ___2___ ___3___ and ___4___ ___5___.

I'm sure you're ___6___ enough to understand ___7___.

I'm returning ___8___ to you, but I'll keep ___9___ as a memory.

You should also know that I ___10___ ___11___.


___12___,

-Your name-

1. What's the color of your shirt?

Blue - Our romance is over
Red - Our affair is over
White - I'll join the monastery
Black - I dislike you
Green - Our horoscope doesn't match
Grey - You're a pervert
Yellow - I'm selling myself
Pink - Your nostrils are insulting
Brown - The mafia wants you
No shirt - You're a loser
Other - I'm in love with your sister

2. Which is your birth month?
January - That night
February - Last year
March - When your dwarf bit me
April - When I tripped on sesame seeds
May - First of May
June - When you put cuffs on me
July - When I threw up
August - When I saw the shrunken head
September - When we skinny dipped
October - When I quoted Santa
November - When your dog ran amok
December - When I changed tennis shoes

3. Which food do you prefer?
Tacos - In your apartment
Pizza - In your camping car
Pasta - Outside of Chicago
Hamburgers - Under the bus
Salad - As you ate enchilada
Chicken - In your closet
Kebab - With Paris Hilton
Fish - In women's clothing
Sandwiches - At the Hare Krishna graduation
Lasagna - At the mental hospital
Hot dog - Under a state of trance
Annat - With George Bush and his wife

4. What's the color of your socks?
Yellow - Hit on
Red - Insulted
Black - Ignored
Blue - Knocked out
Purple - Poured syrup on
White - Carved your initials into
Grey - Pulled the clothes off
Brown - Put leeches on
Orange - Castrated
Pink - Pulled the toupee off
Barefoot - Sat at
Other - Drive out

5. What's the color of your underwear?
Black - My best friend
White - My father
Grey - Bill Clinton
Brown - My fart balloon
Purple - My mustard soufflé
Red - Donald Duck
Blue - My avocado plant
Yellow - My penpal in Ghana
Orange - My Kid Rock-collection
Pink - Manchester United's goalkeeper
None - My John F. Kennedy-statue
Other - The crazy monk

6. What do you prefer to watch on TV?
Scrubs - Man
O.C. - Emotional
One Tree Hill - Open
Heroes -Frostbitten
Lost - High
House -Scarred
Simpsons - Cowardly
The news - Mongolic
Idol - Masochistic
Family Guy - Senile
Top Model - Middle-class
Annat - Ashamed

7. Your mood right now?
Happy - How awful I've felt
Sad - How boring you are
Bored - That Santa doesn't exist
Angry - That your pimples are at the last stage
Depressed - That we're cousins
Excited - That there is no solution to this.
Nervous - The middle-east
Worried - That your Honda sucks
Apathetic - That I did a sex-change
Ashamed - That I'm allergic to your hamster
Cuddly - That I get turned on by garbage men
Overjoyous - That I'm open
Other - That Extreme Home Makeover sucks

8. What's the color of your walls in your bedroom?
White - Your ring
Yellow - Your love letters
Red - Your Darth Vader-poster
Black - Your tame stone
Blue - The couch cushions
Green - The pictures from LA
Orange - Your false teeth
Brown - Your contact book
Grey - Our matching snoopy-bibs
Purple - Your old lottery coupons
Pink - The cut toenails
Other - Your memories from the military service

9. The first letter of your first name?
A/B - Your photo
C/D - The oil stocks
E/F - Your neighbour Martin
G/H - My virginity
I/J - The results of blood-sample
K/L - Your left ear
M/N - Your suicide note
O/P - My common sense
Q/R - Your mom
S/T - Your collection of butterflies
U/V - Your criminal record
W/X - David's tricot outfits
Y/Z - Your grades from college

10. The last letter in your last name?
A/B - Always will remember
C/D - Never will forget
E/F - Always wanted to break
G/H - Never openly mocked
I/J - Always have felt dirty before
K/L - Will tell the authorities about
M/N - Told in my confession today about
O/P - Was interviewed by the Times about
Q/R - Told my psychiatrist about
S/T - Get sick when I think of
U/V - Always will try to forget
W/X - Am better off without
Y/Z - Never liked

11. What do you prefer to drink?
Water- Our friendship
Beer - Senility
Soft drink - A new life as a clone
Soda - The incarnation as an eskimo
Milk - The apartment building
Wine - Cocaine abuse
Cider - A passionate interest for mice
Juice - Oprah Winfrey imitations
Mineral water - Embarrassing rash
Hot chocolate - Eggplant-fetishism
Whisky - To ruin the second world war
Other - To hate the Boston Celtics

12. To which country would you prefer to go on a vacation?
Thailand - Warm regards
USA - Best regards
England - Good luck on your short-term leave from jail
Spain - Go and drown yourself
China - Disgusting regards
Germany - With ease
Japan - Go burn
Greece - Your everlasting enemy
Australia - Greetings to your frog Leonard
Egypt - Fuck off now
France - In pain
Other - Greetings to your freaky family

lifted from isthy's site =)

ang alamat ng litratong ewan hehe

last saturday, after many years without household help, we tried getting one. unfortunately, in less than a week, the kunsumisyon my mama got dealing with the one who came, far outweighed the only benefit we wanted for having a helper around, that is, having someone do the laundry and ironing.

mama had to send her back because she wouldn't admit to dropping the flat iron and breaking it into pieces. we had that flat iron for many years, i have grown attached to it, hehe, but seriously, more than the broken pieces, what my mother disliked about what happened was the fact that the helper, whom we shall call Pipay, did not own up to her mistake, even crying about not having anything to do with the broken plantsa. what was even more irritating for my mother was having someone around the house who cannot be trusted with little things like that. (mama heard something drop from the upstairs room and Pipay insisted nothing fell. after checking, chipped parts of the iron were under the bed. that was her biggest mistake, never lie to mama, ayaw nya ng sinungaling).

i think we're going to stick with getting help with the laundry and ironing from a girl friday who wont have to stay home with us. the only funny thing i will remember about Pipay was when she saw my graduation picture, she told me: ate, ang ganda naman nun, parang artista? i told her: sino sa akala mo. then she answered: PARANG ikaw. i almost fell off my seat laughing at what she said.

that grad pic really gets a lot of people and it makes me wonder, hindi ko ba talaga kamukha yun nasa picture. i can only laugh. well, it's a good start to my little goal: try not to take yourself too seriously Mean.

mean

after a complicated tooth extraction

the legend of the grad pic...
(the one Pipay asked about was not this one,
it was my informal photo
where i wore a makeshift tube dress out of curtain drapes...
you can now stop laughing)

on rehab

i have been coffee-free (i can not claim caffeine-free as i have been sneaking caffeine shots from other "sources") for ten days. from limiting my daily consumption two one cup, i have upgraded to no-coffee, until i finally get my wish (actually two wishes). now, what my coffee-drinking has to do with those two wishes? i won't bother to explain.

i am just amazed how i manage to stay up this late when i've been killing myself at work for the past few weeks, working an average of 12 hours each day, all these without my coffee. maybe i'm mutating to my dream alter ego--the mutant who never gets to sleep.

i wish i am granted my wish(es). i am willing to extend my coffee-abstinence for another month, when it happens. ;) after that, i'd probably be binge drinking my way back to coffee-nirvana.

too cliche

the thing about writing is the fact that everything has already been said. if that's the case, why bother talk about anything else? when writing has become more than mere utterance of words and an expression of known ideas, you will probably understand why.

when you write, you take a chance at giving form and substance to people, events, and experiences, which could very well do without anyone writing about them. talking about anything--people, ideas, hopes and aspirations, fears, etc is a celebration of life in itself.

there is so much about life to write about, if only to celebrate the blessing of being alive. no amount of uncertainty should keep anyone from enjoying the here and now.

over the many summers that have passed, you come to realize, how much differently you see things from ten summers ago. while your perceptions change, your values should remain. the thoughts pour in and you think everything has indeed become too cliche. things that have become overly familiar or commonplace, tend to be taken for granted, if not completely forgotten.


the same is true in people. when you try to remember important people in your life, from your family to your friends, perhaps even the few significant acquaintances you've made, there will always be those whom you know, will always be there when you need them (sometimes even before you ask). but you can never be too sure; people, unlike ideas, can grow tired even against their will. which is why in all your relationships there is no such thing as too cliche.

quit before it kills you

i did not quit another job, that came as a warning to a smoker.

but then, it can also apply to many things other than smoking. it could be a bad habit, a misplaced obsession, an ill feeling, or whatever worries causing us undue stress.

quit before it kills you.

"reality bites"

"the people we love have the greatest power to hurt us..." (quoted)

rambling v.1_no exemptions

In school, some teachers give final exam exemptions to deserving students. Deserving students are of two kinds, those who are simply brilliant, and those who are simply matiyaga. In any case, these exemptions are determined by the pre-finals grades that pretty much tell how well a student did during the entire semester. So the students wait—brilliant, matiyaga or otherwise, for the announcement of exemptions.

[I later realized, effort didn’t count much in earning exemptions (“I tried to get high scores you know”) than it does in at least passing a course (‘nagsipag naman po ako, hindi ko lang po talaga inabot ang grade, sana ipasa niyo na lang ako”)] Teachers have their ways of knowing. They just know. And it’s true, we made our grades, and they basically add up and compute what we give them, save for some occasions when a student’s hardworking attitude and character make some teachers reconsider and re-evaluate the case. (Why am I thinking about all these?! It’s been four years since I finished school and maybe, I really want to study again :p)

Going back to the excitement and anticipation of being exempted, students generally accept the exemption and skip the test to study for the other subjects instead. There are those who take the test even if they got exempted, much to their classmates’ annoyance. Ang yabang naman! Hehe

I was one of those who took advantage of exemptions. If my memory serves me right (I sometimes get senior moments already), I never took a test to make my pre-finals grade higher. When I look back, I made a few realizations. One is when I chose to take the exemptions, I actually missed out on the purpose of the final exam, and that is the chance to systematically measure how much information was retained in my head. (I am partial to the idea that exams do NOT measure true learning, well that’s just my opinion) Maybe that explains why I have forgotten most of the computations we did in school, though I am really more of a conceptual learner, if there is such an idea hehe, I love ideas, explaining and understanding ideas, and making them useful. My point is—being exempted has its disadvantages.

Number two, school is too small a microcosm of the universe and all universal laws that govern it, still it is from where we spent most of our formative years until such time, we are mature enough to brave the jungle—that is, when the decisions we have to make are much more than merely accepting or refusing an exemption.

Lastly, for those who chose to take the test even if they didn’t have to, they sure had their reasons, but for the sake of humoring, they should have taken the exemption because, once out of school, the privilege of exemptions becomes rare, in fact, we hardly even get one.

From the trivial to the more consequential, there is so much in our daily routine that supports our contention that there are no exemptions. Nobody is spared from traffic (at least in Manila). Tax exemptions? I don’t like talking about taxes, for one, I don’t totally understand it, and number two, the little I understand about it only frustrates me.

Everyone experiences pain, weather physical or emotional. Everyone goes through phases of weakness, doubt and hopelessness. Everyone experiences sorrow and emptiness. Everyone feels alone sometimes. Everyone feels guilt, frustration, anger and fear. Then again, we always have to remember that we can not remain stuck in this loop.

In our uncontrived reality, there are no exemptions.