telenovela

One cannot ignore that I have been neglecting my blog. I have been busy with work, reading fiction and writing essays about them, and necking with SB (the significance of that statement will make itself apparent in a different blog entry). And because I no longer have an outlet, words reserved for narrative telling discovered a new escape route – email correspondence.

Since the invention of boundaries and air travel, the world’s population has been divided into two: 1) those who leave and 2) those who are left behind. Tricia, who’s a good friend of mine from high school, is part of that first group and is now residing in The Big Apple (I’m trying to revive the use of US city monikers. Watch out, Grossy – the Windy City is next.). This is my response to an email she sent me a few months back:

how are things? malamang masaya ka diyan. kwento ka na lang kung Mrs Bare ka na. two minutes na akong nakatitig sa monitor and i can't think of what to write. it's hard to recover the pieces of the lives we once knew - where does one start? we were used to having each other around, just a phone call or text away. now, we're just one ocean away. what do you say to someone who lives beyond your own milieu? whose voice and writing seem unfamiliar, alien to you as a result of chosen paths no longer diverging in a common tract of land called friendship? i can just imagine meeting you in a cafe after years of not seeing each other, and after the surge of excitement subsides we will find ourselves fiddling with the nearest utensil, staring blankly at the bottom of the empty coffee mug thinking why have i ran out of things to say. i don't mean to sound depressing, i'm just trying to address the inevitable.


first of all, who uses "milieu?"

and "second of all," I’m such a girl (and apparently a misogynist, too). Never knew I had a flair for the dramatic. I sound like Camille from Sana Maulit Muli – "Traydor ka, Jasmine! Traydor ka! Bakit mo inahas sa ‘kin si Travis? Bakit?" We know the repetition is for emphasis but I’d rather she translated the reiteration –

Bakit mo inahas sa ‘kin si Travis?

[pause]

Why?


(and to those who are wondering – this is not an embittered attempt to discourage any correspondence between the two groups mentioned. I welcome any queries regarding how I’m doing, etc. “Recovering the pieces of the lives we once knew” is as easy as writing in one’s blog. Wow. Fropound.)

dance of the dunces 2

SB has this nasty habit of channel jetskiing – covering everything from the domain of the kapamilya to the jihad channel (77, reference sky cable silver) in just under ten seconds. the rate of flipping differs depending on the channel groupings; news, animation, and sports suffering the most in this exercise. she kicks it up a notch when she hits the set of sports channels, knowing it’s one of the few things besides Conan and Jojo A that generates enough electric current in my budget-siopao-sized brain to keep me from losing all cognitive faculties and just start drooling and saying incoherent things like I must blog everyday so people will know how interesting my trudge to fulfilling my entropic destiny is. it becomes slightly disorienting seeing footballs, Nascar decals, and Sharapova’s panties in a single sequence (puwedeng lyrics). she lingers occasionally to make sure that the girl eliminated in Tyra’s America’s Next Top Model is the one she read about in one of those “not porn” sites (aside from Wikipedia, I can’t comprehend why people bother with “not porn” sites. “not porn” – ugh, the profanity!); or to bear witness to the latest news update in the only show that champions credibility and prides itself as the hallmark of investigative Philippine journalism – The Buzz.

i must admit, watching the shows SB approves of is a welcome reprieve to monitoring the rise and fall of the index in Bloomberg. especially when we hit the couch potato jackpot - that elusive, unadulterated form of entertainment otherwise known as Pinoy Reality TV.

and we’re not talking about Pinoy Big Brother, Pinoy Dream Academy, or Pinoy “Philippine” Idol (pinilit yung parallelism, parang Rudy “DaBoy” Fernandez or Krustico “Krusty” The Clown). rather, this is a look into the complex dialogue incorporated in ABC 5’s Shall We Dance with your host Lucy “Klepto” Torres-Gomez.

in no way comparable to Hollywood’s own Dancing with the Stars, Shall We Dance showcases the various talents of local celebrities (showbiz personalities, professional athletes, Jueteng Kubradors, etc.). and, contrary to the show’s title, it’s not dancing that’s being referred to when I say talent. it’s more on these entertainers’ innate wit that kept both SB and I temporarily immobilized in front of the tube. Arnel Ignacio’s hair is more than enough to make one suffer an aneurysm from laughing too hard, but it’s his comment on Alex Crisano’s dance instructor and partner’s communication skills that did it for me – “Bakit ka ganyan mag-English. Para kang taga-Guam.” the judges don’t hold back either (I don’t really know which is more distracting – Audie Gemora’s fashion sense or Regine Tolentino’s nose which, depending on the angle, is clearly an 8-seater powered at least by a 3.0L diesel engine.). Edna Ledesma’s (judge and grand prize winner in the Latin Dance Senior Category held in Blackpool, England) comment on Archie Alemanya’s partner’s performance (“You’re so full of energy. You’re like an Energizer.”) was a TV first – it’s the first time an ellipsis was actually manifested beyond the two-dimensional plane.

but it’s Alex Crisano’s explanation of why he was taunting his ex-girlfriend and fellow participant, Ethel Booba, that made me a believer once again of the entertainment value of local TV. he said, “You have to be competitive. You have to get in the mind of your component.”

this goes beyond any conflict ever discussed in scholastic circles: Man versus Promac. it does make a good tagline - i bet it would sound funnier with Aga's lisp.

what.

this might be a regular thing i'll be doing - going over books that i haven't read in ages. i've read only a handful of books more than once; Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, all three of Zahn's post-Return of the Jedi novels, Polotan-Tuvera's Hand of the Enemy (read this skillfully crafted novel three times but still no final paper for Manalo, hence no diploma, hence UP undergrad, hence still a jackass loser, hence potapakshetnaman alma get off my back i am graduating soon), Lightman's Einstein's Dreams, and quite shamefully, Brown's Da Vinci Code (aka DVC - use in a sentence: bro, i read the DVC na after chilling at Emba where Jay-R made upak the Borgy.). don’t ask what I’m doing reading an old college text book (next on the list is Leithold's TC7), but this is what I found in one of the pages of Acuna’s Philosophical Analysis:


“If we accept that an A-form statement is true: All A are B then you know that an O-form is false: Some A are not B and an E-form is also false: All A are not B. In contrast, if you accept that an E-form is true All A are not B, we can say that the A-form All A are B and I-form Some A are B are false. However if we accept that the I-form is true: Some A are B. We can immediately reject the contradictory statement E-form All A are not B as false. The truth of an I-form has no consequence on the A or O-form. If we assume that and O-form is true: Some A are not B, immediately, the A-form is false, but it has no effect on the I and E-form. The bare minimum requirement to falsify an A or E-form is a single counter example. This insight has tremendous consequences in our study of inductive reasoning in Unit IV.”1


it wasn’t the unintelligible text that got my attention. it was the sentence I scribbled on that page’s margin:


"In the immortal words of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Come again?"2



1 - Acuna, Andresito E. Philosophical Analysis Fourth Edition. (Quezon City: UP Department of Philosopy, 1998), 93.

2 - obviously borrowed from Snatch, a 2000 film directed by Guy Ritchie. it was Brick Top (brilliantly played by English actor, Alan Ford) who said it.3

3 - and yes, i am addicted to wikipedia.

busted

alma (i never found "mom" endearing) was searching the net for the best mobile phone to get my dad (his name is edrie. we don't want to piss off the breadwinner.). naturally, she had to type the word nokia on google's search field. after hitting the "n" key, google - never trust anything named by a 3-year-old - volunteered a couple of keywords that i've used in the past (ignore the use of the present perfect tense - a recently completed action). this is how it went down:


alma: pj, ano itong non-nude teen lesbians kissing?

busted raver: don't look at me.

alma: gago, sino pa kaya?

busted raver [unblinking]: i need to tell you something.

a: ano?

br [without batting an eyelash]: your daughter is gay.

a [doubtful]: si zag, masaya?

br [stoic still]: she's happy all right. strap-on happy.


that is how you worm your way out of a potentially awkward situation. don't think twice. just flat-out lie. listen to Darwin. it's eat or be eaten (that sounded dirty).


and, no. this isn't a dream, kid. daddy's back.

time space warp

there are days when you just don't know where you are. take the enterprise for example (wrong blog, trekkie. get lost. play with your action figures or something. "play.") - i've been working there for almost 4 months now, but i still find myself baffled by the design of its lobby. it must be the constant change in cabin pressure inside my head that's causing me to lose all sense of direction (i work in the 31st flr). especially when getting off the elevators, figuring out whether to make a right or a left is such a task. segue: i remember alighting from one of the lifts here in our building and i made a hard left only to change my mind in mid-stride. i quickly turned to the opposite direction. everyone knows that there are only a few things that still surprise me - let's just say that having a young woman, whom i hardly know, smothering herself against my chiseled (or cheeseled) pecs comprises one of those few things.

i'm not entirely sure if it's the altitude adjustment that's throwing me off kilter (or out of kilter. kilter-kilter pa kasi.). it doesn't help either that my working hours are not to be envied (9pm-6am). and here's the clincher: try to imagine my situation wherein i have to get up the same time you guys are about to have dinner - enduring the heat and mom's cackle while watching bulagaan in the afternoon - my whole world topsy turvy as it already is, i turn on the tv and i find myself wondering whether i am the victim of an elaborate practical joke, that the year isn't really 2005. what i saw on the tube disturbed me a little.

it was the making of Men in Black 2 on AXN.


someone tell me what year it really is. ngayon din. (shigi-shigi...)