national pornographic

i have heard a number of descriptions pertaining to the male genitalia, descriptions ranging from the fictive (hanggang tuhod) to the downright absurd (may ngipin). men tend to exaggerate when it comes to the "tool of their trade" or the "male equipment". but when women describe what they have seen, all hell (bowel control, in this case) breaks loose.

zag and i were channel surfing the other day, desperate for some quality tv. i usually flip from USA (ultimate in sports and action) to MTV, so we get to see all the channels in between (including the highly riveting Bloomberg and Moneyindex). there was a special, i think, about aborigines on national geographic that day. there's something clearly (or queerly) homo-erotic about scantily-clad men blowing on what appears to be a 4-foot long aboriginal woodwind instrument. i digress, like i usually do.

upon seeing what remains of Australia's first settlers, zag muttered something moderately shocking - "nakita ko kaya yung thing nila, once." note the use of the more appropriate term for the word penis. i don't particularly remember asking for details of what my sister had previously gawked upon; call me retarded, but the discussion of things other than my own have never interested me.

what i do remember is zag giving an acutely vivid detailing of an aboriginal "fifth limb". incapacitated by a fit of hysterical laughing, she was barely able to get the words out -

"mukha kayang pupu na nakalawit sa harap."

National Geographic Channel. Dare to explore?

fallacious defined

how many times have we encountered those laptop-lugging losers in Starbucks, typing what appears to be the screenplay of the movie version of the afternoon serial Daisy Siete, and sipping ice water served in 3-ounce white paper cups? most of them are not-so-young uppies, grown ass men who find those boy abunda eyeglasses sexy and sport hairlines that recede all the way to the back of their necks. the lot of us aren't sure what annoys us more: the whirring and beeping of their laptops that can be heard, albeit faintly, in Guadalajara; or the smug expression on their faces after everyone - including the toothless yosi vendor outside the coffee shop - had turned their heads in the direction of the source of that noise.

i'm not sure which smug expression i should employ: i could be like Wendell Ramos in Gamitan, in that scene where he had just ravished the virginal Maui Taylor (referred to in our batch as Maureen Fainsan) and was now in the company of his amoeba-brained posse giving them a whiff of her vaginal secretions reeking from both his middle and index fingers. his was the triumph of the everyman (or the purple lace Triumph of Maui. more of conan-tongue-in-cheek humor in just a sec.) - the claiming of the prude schoolgirl's shame gives hope to the middle-aged pedophile in all of us. but i digress.

okay. the cocksure-wendell expression will do. but for what purpose?

this will be my facial attire when i'm initiated to that elite club i mentioned in the beginning of this entry, for i am now the proud owner of an Efio!P22T. if you haven't heard of the new DVD-CDRW Slimline series from Twinhead, then you must be living under a rock somewhere (7 Bato-balani St.). The P22T carries a Mobile AMD Athlon XP 1400+ processor with 128 MB DDRAM1; this badboy can go toe-to-toe with your Wordstar equipped 386 anyday. one of the more interesting aspects of my laptop (like this baby will ever rest on my clumsy-ass lap) is its touchpad. instead of those mongol erasers that one toggles in regular laptops, i had to get a high-maintenance, dust-sensitive touchpad; which has predictably affected my nosepicking pastime. the delicate nature of the touchpad becomes problematic when my mother, armed with swiss army nails , "borrows" (synonymous with "wala kang choice, boy.") my laptop.

the institution of private property has been around for centuries. in my family, this idea was never fully comprehended. the only thing you can really own is something you bought using money from your own pocket. if something was given to you, as a gift for example, then you can be certain that this thing isn't fully yours. case in point: my laptop. it took ten crispy benjamins from my dad's pocket to purchase this beautiful piece of machinery, a much-deserved reward for breezing through college - being the doogie-howser-promil-prodigy that i am (those six years went by so fast). it's mine, as far as i can tell. wrong. the back of the LCD has a thin plastic film statically adhered to its silver speckled surface2, and in the tradition of the illogical and utterly pointless pinoy paradigm, my mother decreed, "Hindi mo tatanggalin yan. Magagasgas. Sino bang bumili niyan?" in three relatively short sentences my freedom was shackled by autocracy's stainless steel chains.

fucker.com

it's not the presence of the plastic film that irks me (although it reminds me of that tacky pinoy habit of keeping furniture, particularly the sofa, in its freshly sealed state. remember Abangan Ang Susunod na Kabanata?); but it's the helplessness that engulfs my being when faced with three completely logical sentences. the first one (hindi mo tatanggalin yan.), an imperative sentence, is justified by the third sentence (sino bang bumili niyan?), which isn't really an interrogative sentence (the question stands in place of its answer/reply - the declarative, "ako ang bumili niyan."). sentence number two (magagasgas.) describes what will happen if the plastic film is removed. taken as a collective, this three-sentence combo illustrates the command-justification correlation - the command (sent. 1) is given not one, but two justifications, the first (sent. 2) is a description of the effect of non-compliance with the initial imperative, the second (sent. 3) renders the command unchallengeable. my mom's no rocket scientist, but her argument is brilliant. when faced with three verifiable truths, one is left with no choice but to comply with mommy's demands.

the matriarch has also decreed that the laptop will not leave the confines of this house. that means my Starbucks Laptop-Toting Gloaters application is deferred indefinitely. look on the bright side, i will be left with more time to rehearse my smug-wendell expression, or i can review possible alternative looks in Sabel or in Bubble Gang reruns.


1 - this has to be the sexiest clause in the english language.
2 - one of two alliterations in this entry. where's waldo the other one.