Chickadees! ^_^

Two chicks (as in baby chickens) mysteriously found their way into our backyard today. It's really weird  because although we do have chickens roaming around at home, the chickens are all male. So where those two chicks came from is really a mystery.

I'm actually used to having 'farm animals' at home because we've always had them since I was a kid. See, my father's family has a farm and he feels a sort of attachment to farm animals. We actually had turkeys, ducks, goats and sheep once (but not all at the same time), but chickens are as staple as dogs to us, and they roam around as freely as our dogs (much to my father's delight and my mother's annoyance because they destroy her garden plants).

It actually isn't the first time that we're going to raise week-old chicks. When my sister was five, she saw a vendor peddling those colored-chicks (like Buddy Feps' Consuelo) and convinced my mom to buy her three chicks, which she named Alexander, Whitey and Jude respectively. We took care of the chicks - we housed them in our old bird cage (which used to contain four lovebirds I set free in the name of humanitarianism), gave them ground corn to eat and set them free once a day so they can roam around and exercise. At night we'd get the portable fluorescent bulb from my dad's shop and put it in their cage so they wouldn't get cold.

Alexander, Whitey and Jude all turned out to be male White Leghorns, and even though they looked all the same to me, my sister knew who was who. When they were too big for the cage we set them free in the backyard. They were already very tame then, so they really didn't give us a problem. The loved my sister a lot and they would come around and follow her every time she went out. Mind you, they all died of old age because we loved them too much to even consider eating them.

There was also that time when a friend of my dad's gave him a dozen 45 Days chicks as a gift for his coming birthday, saying he could cook them later. We raised those chicks the same way we raised Alexander, Whitey and Jude, but we didn't name them because when you have identical white chickens, names are pointless. When the week of my dad's birthday came my mom asked if he wanted the chickens slaughtered for meat, but my dad looked at her like she was crazy. He said that his day wasn't complete without seeing those twelve chickens roaming around. Those twelve nameless chickens also died natural deaths.

We haven't named the chicks yet because they're so young that we can't even tell if they're male or female, but I have a hunch that both are male. One has darker tufts than the other, (though based on experience, the color of the tufts doesn't necessarily indicate the color of the feathers later) but because we found the chicks together I'm assuming that they're brothers. So I'm thinking about naming them Sam and Dean from Supernatural, or Alan and Charlie from Two and a Half Men, or Carl and Thomas from Zoids, or Terrorblade and Magina from Dota, or Pau and Marc (Gasol! ^_^) from NBA, or even Vegeta and Tarble from Dragon Ball.

See, I like brothers. And chickens. ^_^

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How Many Times Must My Heart Break For You

In the end, I can only ask myself how many times my heart must break for this team.

Seriously, what kind of team leads the finals series 2-0 and ends up losing, or starts the playoffs as top seeds and proceeds to be eliminated by the last seeded team, or adds Jason Kidd and Shawn Marion to a roster that already has Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry, and JJ Barrea and comes up with nothing at all?

Or how about now. I was expecting the Mavs to get eliminated in the next round by the Lakers (I’m being realistic here), but I guess they won’t even get to see Phil Jackson’s kids because the Blazers look like they’re the ones who are gonna advance to the second round.

And seriously, I ask myself what kind of sane person would support a team that is this disappointing.

The loyal kind of fan. That’s what. And that’s what I am. That’s what I have been for the last nine years. And that’s what I will continue to be as long as this team has Dirk Nowitzki in its roster and has Mark Cuban as its owner.

Tomorrow, there’s gonna be a 3 in the scoreboard. It might be 3-2 or 2-3. In the future I might see a 3-3, and later a 2-4 or a 4-3 or a 3-4 or a 4-2. But whatever the numbers turn out to be, I know that only two digits will matter in the end.

41.

Go, Mavericks!

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I don't know which is scarier.

1. The fact that today is the deadline of grade submission for graduating students, it's almost 8pm and I still don't have a grade in Econ 141. Not that I'm still hoping that I'll actually pass the subject and graduate.

2. The fact that yesterday when I went to the mall with my cousin, I actually considered buying a five hundred peso men's magazine just because Georges Fucking St-Pierre was on the cover.

3. The fact that I dreamt about Axe the Mogul Khan and I woke up all sweaty. At this point, should anybody really be asking why?

You decide.

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Libera ex Infernis

It’s the emotional equivalent of looking at myself through layers of mirrors. I turn, try to find myself in the varying reflections, some tall and short and broken and twisted - but I catch nothing other than splayed flecks of motion. It’s hard to see anything when everything is moving so fast all at the same time. In chaos, an archangel said, thrives order.

Something breaks. Shards of glass take off to every direction, and one particularly sharp piece slices through the quasi-Romantic pretension that is the person you know as me. Do I wince, wail, cry? But I’m supposed to be good at pretension. No. I procrastinate. I wait for a few minutes, hours, days, and I justify the wasted time by writing – er, constructing a textual landscape.

The smile on my professor’s face when returns the essay is broad enough to rival that of Azgalor’s. “Brilliant!” He exclaims in a crazed, demented manner that is reminiscent of Tolkien’s Saruman. On my paper he wrote, ‘Exceptional review of Ilustrado!’. I, of course, have never even laid my eyes on that book, much less read it.

What was it that Crispin Salvador said? “Ezra Pound be damned. Poets lie, though beautifully. Don't make things new, make them whole.” But that is why things get broken, Jin argues inside my head. That way you can make them whole again. But Jin, I protest. You’re just a pen name I use to ship a particular silver-tongued Jashinist. You’re not real.

And then I have to wonder what else is not and has never been real. And then the inner turmoil begins again.

This is why I am broken. You made me believe that we took the journey of an arrow - shot far and true, never to return to the hostility we used to hoard for each other, but you deceived me and made the journey of a boomerang instead, edging away and then suddenly returning to the very same place you told me you have left. And for the first time, I am at loss as to where I home really is, and if I belong there at all. If I want to belong there at all.

I am scared. Of the future, yes, but more of the past and how it haunts the present. If it is of any consolation, I do feel sad right now. Maybe it confirms that I’m still tethered to home, even if only by its shadows and whatever experimental canvas of junctures you cared to paint for me.

“Be mature about it.” “Take it with maturity.” “Deal with it in a mature way.” Those are things Rex Dizon has told me too many times.

Maybe maturity is merely accepting the tally of all the finite and disappearing options of life. After all, love isn’t based on gratitude, and respect isn’t based on debt.

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Kung sino man kayo.

I just need to say this, because you have no idea how pissed off I really am right now.

***

Seriously ha. I'm not the nicest person around and I'm even openly bitchy so I get it if I don't hit some people the right way, and that's fine with me. Pero yung sabihin na I just act nice para masabi ng ibang tao na mabait ako, dude, that's just soooo low.

Bakit, pag may nakita ba kayong ibang tao na gumagawa ng 'nice' things, like helping people out, sinasabi niyo bang "Ay nagprepretend lang yan para masabi ng ibang tao na mabait siya"? O ako lang ang pinag-iisipan niyo ng ganyan because you know that you already don't like me anyway?

And in the first place, sino ba sa tingin ninyo yang mga 'tao' na gusto kong magsabi na mabait ako? You and your friends? You think I'd waste my time pretending to be nice para tawagin niyo akong mabait? Duh, I'm sorry to have to break it to you but the world does not revolve around you and what you think.

At ang kapal din ng mukha ninyo na sabihing ako ang nagpepretend na mabait. Ako, when I don't like someone or something that someone did, I say it and as much as possible I try to confront the people involved para mabigyan ko naman sila ng chance to explain. E kayo? Malalaman ko lang na you're talking behind my back from another person who doesn't have issues with me but whose perception of me is affected by the things you say.

Wala kayong sinasabing issue sa akin, and I didn't even think that I had an issue with anyone so ibig sabihin you've been pretending to be my friends all along, and then you talk behind my back. Sino sa atin ang nagpepretend na mabait? How dare you say it's me.

And mind you ha, this is not the first time someone apologized to me dahil nagpadala daw siya sa sinasabi ng ibang tao na masamang ugali ko kahit wala naman siyang nakikitang ganon sakin. I shrugged it off the first time kase inisip ko baka whoever said it did not mean to talk shit about me, baka observation or heat of the moment rant lang.

Pero surprise, surprise! Hanggang ngayon pala you talk shit about me, and I know that you really mean it.

Grabe lang. If you think what you are doing is right and you can stand by your actions, why do you need to hide it from me? It just means two things. You can't stand by your actions or you're just really a low life. Hmmm, siguro both.

I don't waste time pretending to be what I'm not to please other people kase sa totoo lang, I would rather please myself and that's what I do. If I'm nice to somebody, it's true. If I'm bitchy to somebody, it's also true. Hindi kase ako katulad niyo na plastic.

So kung sino man kayo, fuck you. I would say forget you nalang, kaya lang baka sabihin nyo na naman I'm pretending to be nice.

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This is my 100th post

and I would like it to be about thanking:

1. Rex Dizon, for convincing me to put up a blog

2. Everyone who has read, is reading, or will read my posts

3. Myself, for actually putting up with this.


Now please excuse me, I have to:

1. Mourn the loss of my beloved Dan Hardy

2. Watch Season 3 of Leverage

3. Oh, yeah, write a Polsc 177 (or is it 178?) reaction paper.

Tata everyone. ^_^

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For the BMW in Red

On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about I'm like a ship on the ocean
I set a course for winds of fortune
But I hear the voices say

***

Each sunrise that blooms, blossoms and bleeds out is a series of colors that change only with the order one joins the game. It’s sky blue if you join first, purple if second, yellow if third and finally orange if fourth. As far as she could remember, he has never created a game and thus claimed the color dark blue. Whether it’s because she always volunteers to create a game first or their chinky-eyed friend is too frustrated to wait for a game to be created whenever they lose so he creates it himself, she will never know.

Instead of each setting sun ghosting through the blue-orange skies with the promise of another laughter filled day the next time Apollo rises, it’s now a series of blog post representing a number with which he measures his days. She has noticed the change in the posts. When that number was relatively large, the posts (at least in the non-emo blog) were either relatively happy and in I-will-shrug-everything-off mode or romantic dabbles about who knows who, but now as the number fades away, the posts are more personal, more emotional.

She wonders if a day passes when he forgets to count.

***

It’s not the first time he skived off his classes (or what’s left of them) for the noise-splashed freedom of the tambayan. It’s become usual for her to arrive and find him there, drawing or scribbling or eating or drawing.

“Naayos mo na ba yung papers mo nyan?” she asks.
He shakes his head, replies that he doesn’t even want to think about it.
“Ignoring it won’t make it go away.” She replies as-a-matter-of-factly, rather insensitively.

Perhaps too insensitively. She has told him that his posts are poignant, but she has never told him that she feels sorry about his situation, not even shown a bit of sadness for him directly. Maybe a part of her, the one who doesn’t forgive easily, still sees him as the guy who snubbed her for so long due reasons unknown or don’t want to be known.

Unlike her though, he has always been forgiving. Now he acts like nothing happened. He talks to her freely without the slightest hint of caution, gives hear a heads up every time there’s dinner or an EBS, comforts her about her failing situation. The way she sees it, when he leaves, he wants her to be a good memory.

Sometimes she feels like she doesn’t deserve it.

***

‘Sorry’ is a word that sounds distastefully foreign on her tongue. She tries to mouth it every now and then but she can’t get used to the disjointed syllables jostling through her teeth. The word ‘sorry’ to her equates to images of mistakes and guilt, and Martin.

Peter is the name she gave that stuffed bear she received two Christmases ago. Everyone else calls it Ondoy because she left it near a window the weekend of Ondoy and it turned from a polar bear into a black bear. Peter slash Ondoy sits quietly with Bloobee, Carlos, Kirk, Tigger, Rufus, Christopher, Adrienne, Misha and the dozen other stuffed animals in a corner of her room.

Her mom asked last Christmas if she wanted to give Peter slash Ondoy away to charity. She shrugged mindfully and said no. And then for some reason she wondered whatever happened to Pokey, that pillow who came with Peter slash Ondoy.

As far as she can remember, she hasn’t said sorry for what she did to Pokey. Maybe one day, when ‘sorry’ doesn’t seem so exasperating, she finally will.

***

He says that they are close again. She’s not sure if she can agree. Then again, closeness has always been arbitrary.

These days she’s all about that pretty boy angel with the smexiest lips on heaven and on earth who is totally clueless about the dynamics of porn, or that German basketball player with the perfect set of teeth who is always so close but never really quite gets to the championship, or that French UFC welterweight champion with the most beautiful blue eyes who made it crystal clear that he is not impressed with your performance. If she’s not talking about them, she’s blogging about them. You’d think she doesn’t care enough to remember anything unrelated to the aforementioned men.

But she does. She remembers that PC game about cars, that freaky movie about genital anomalies, that day when Kamaru made a total idiot of himself.

And she just hopes that he didn’t miss that look in her eyes when out of the blue she bought him a plate of tacos last time.

With extra tomatoes.

***

Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry…don't you cry no more

-Carry On My Wayward Son, Kansas
Supernatural Opening Theme

Just because I listened to this song over and over and over while writing this.

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