Hater

I hate you all!

Indifference ban

Things happened today in Manila, Philippines: a person who has had it with this world committed suicide via the trusty killing machine, the MRT, and caused traffic along EDSA where I pass by daily, and it allegedly happened around the same time I was on commute (In my opinion, people who commit suicide in public places, especially in Philippine public transportation, and in rush hours, are not thinking very reasonably) — totally unnoticed by me; blackout in the gloriously hot Metro Manila and I wasn’t as affected as affective people who are highly affected by all things that happen in this world and maybe also elsewhere, because I was using a laptop (so my work went uninterrupted) and I was spared from possibly grave air-con-related inconvenience because I was fine with the combination of early morning extreme air-con cold and sudden mellow, moderate office heat; and lastly, there is a election-related liquor ban being imposed because, maybe, the people who think about these things (congressmen? MMDA?) are very simple-minded because I, also sometimes insufferably simple-minded, just fail to see the sense in this, although I don’t feel like this ban is going to affect my being because there is leftover liquor in the ref and I’m lately not caring so much about being very drunk as to be roused from what I humbly think is a very senseless, snicker-worthy reason and occasion to ban liquor.

As the second child in a family of the kind that I have, there is strong evidence to support the occasional suspicion that the universe is evidently, undoubtedly indifferent to the idea of me. Maybe of you, too. Based on these observations of mine, too, I seem to be indifferent/want to affect an air of indifference to many disgraceful, mind-blowingly senseless events, but the universe, which would not suffer to be out-indifferenced by any fool, is way more indifferent and don’t I forget it.

Gays of our lives

Dave White, author of Exile in Guyville: How a Punk Rock Redneck Faggot Texan Moved to West Hollywood and Refused to be Shiny and Happy, is the kind of gay who thinks he’s a special kind of gay, who thinks that by frequently silently judging gays he despises, which he claims he would hate too had they been straight, he’s exempt from being the kind of gay other gays would also find despicable. Except that the world he lives in (Los Angeles) and the world in general has no shortage of haters and haterades. We each and everyone of us fill the world’s quota of someone’s hate. And this is true even or especially within “The Gay Community” (“Gay Community”, to me, will always and forever evoke an image of a subdivision filled with gays with really excellent gardens and exclusively non-tacky decors, with the exception of only a very few tacky, unaware gays who will of course be treated as anomalies by their super classy gay neighbors).

In DW’s community there are these types of gays:

1. Entitlement queens

2. Disco faggot douchebags (‘I’m not saying that house music is the internationally recognized sound-signifier of the faggot douchebag, but there’s a very specific type of faggot douchebag who only listens to house music, and so as a genre it’s a little guilty by association’)

3. Gays who kick your car

4. Dress-all-stupid queens

5. Gay bears

6. Gays who are like the gays in Will & Grace

7. Crystal meth queens

There are so many, but in other worlds there are these other types of gays:

1. Big word gays – gays that use multisyllabic nonsense because it makes them feel like they are wise gays.

2. Spiteful gays

3. Gays who hate Anne Hathaway

4. Gays who hate the Catholic Church

And there are many more. Feel free to create your own list.

Dave White is a film critic who’s boyfriend is MSNBC’s Alonso Duralde who I like because in his review of Precious, he praises Mariah. As he should! Because of an all-consuming, mad love for his lover, Dave tries to overcome all odds and transfers to Los Angeles, leaving his beloved Texas. Among LA’s great barriers to Dave’s achievement of happiness and contentment are the aforementioned entitlement queens, reckless drivers, shouty neighborhood gays, and rude bookstore clerks. Such are his LA life’s difficulties that you can’t help but think, ‘You are so brave, Dave.’ In between battling these great obstacles, he goes from one temp job to another because he will not suffer the oppressiveness of a permanent job.

Clearly, he’s a bit of an entitlement queen himself. His real problem is that instead of 14 hours of couch-surfing and snacking, he gets only 12.

Actually, Dave White is a fun person who is not a typical gay. He calls gays faggots, which is a slur, and you get the feeling he gets away with it every time he uses it with/to his boyfriend and friends. He’s ruthless with the gays — you know how when someone who’s also a flaming homosexual refers to his fellow gays in a hissy, spiteful way because he feels like it? He’s like that with gays he dislikes and to chubbies and bimbos, too, because he’s fair. With seemingly little regard for human feelings, he talks about them in his diaries scathingly and hilariously, whether they’re directly harming him as to warrant the hissiness or they’re just existing near him. He doesn’t care for euphemisms. He will call a fat person a fattie and he’ll tell funny anecdotes about them abandonedly. In short, Dave White is a precise, funny and beautiful describer of people.

My favorite chapter is ‘Motherfucker’ because it contains one of the most breathtaking paragraphs I’ve ever read in a memoir:

‘Yes, I watch crotches. I’m a faggot. I was put on this earth to do a whole lot of that and I don’t want to shirk my responsibility to humanity… I have a soft spot for sex workers.’

Dave White is real.

If Queens Burroughs and Sedaris could kindly step aside, please. There’s a new queen in my community.

Mariah’s Thing

‘My thing is that I have to be myself and if that means that in that moment I don’t hear you, I don’t see you and you don’t exist to me at this moment, then that’s what it is.’

Mariah Carey, best person singer in the world, may have accidentally articulated how we (or just I) should feel about peoples and things that need rebuking off of our aura, when the quarrelings with Nicki Minaj led to things such as this quote which she eloquently and generously elucidated in an ET interview.

My interpretation of this is: Be yourself. If within yourself something doesn’t exist in your specific moment which can be totally whatever, don’t exhaust any of your senses by hearing, seeing or smelling something that is not existing in your moment. And then let it be.

A practical application of this is: instead of making a ‘Whateveeeeeeer!’ comment in any of your social networks “‘friends’s” posts, which you have to admit the internal struggle to not do can sometimes seem so insurmountable, you just nonchalantly block everything off because, hello, you have just been guided by Mariah’s non-existent beings moment management. Learn.

The Prominent Penis

Jessica Zafra, my very good, true and trusted amiga (!!!), published my book review of The Virgin of Flames in Jessica Rules the Universe and I’m here right now to immortalize the moment because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside:

You may not be familiar with the people in Chris Abani’s The Virgin of Flames, but they are the sort of personalities you would love to gossip about. Instead of figuring what this novel is all about, you may be better off marveling at the oddities of the characters.

The novel follows its protagonist, Black, around Los Angeles as he tries to come to terms with his hauntingly ugly childhood through his art. He is a 30-something muralist on a quest to find himself in the vibrant city. He is introduced to the reader while trying on face paint, doing things with his face and basically being odd because he is An Artiste and a true weirdo. And nothing validates a weirdo more than a set of equally strange friends. He is surrounded by so much weirdness, sometimes you wish this were about them instead.

Black, to some readers, may seem too weird and foreign. He is a multiracial artist who likes a transsexual stripper, likes his Johnny Walker, and in his spare time dresses like the Virgin Mary. Is he gay? Is he a conventional weirdo? Two-hundred odd pages on and you still may not have figured him out. He keeps building the mystery. Towards the end of the novel, he even tries to learn how to tuck his penis in his butt the way a transvestite does—a real treat for guy readers. But if this were about his quest to discover his true sexuality, it may have been over in the first hundred pages. Besides, those who are not in the habit of wearing tanga to make a living would attest that dick-tucking is something you do exclusively for fun. Clearly, Black should make for an interesting read. But maybe you’d rather hang out with his penis or the sidekicks.

Bomboy Dickens is the primary sidekick. He spouts the novel’s most interesting bits of dialogue, but he’s sadly relegated to the role of comic relief. If it crosses your mind that The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is getting a worthy successor, it is due to the snappy retorts of Bomboy and his conversations with Black. Alas, Abani’s aim is not to appeal to your funny bones.

Also there is Iggy, Black’s landlady. She’s bald and she keeps a tattoo parlor and bar called The Ugly Store that has a mural filled with racist, politically-incorrect inscriptions. She keeps a midget servant who loves to quote Raymond Chandler. Iggy, she is also not like you and me.

Black’s penis, on the other hand, does not speak; nor does it have idiosyncrasies like Bomboy and Iggy. Its appearance is infrequent but its presence is major. It’s also sort of a plot-mover. Sometimes it alone drives him forward and mostly towards Sweet Girl, the immigrant Thai transsexual he’s inexplicably drawn to. Inexplicably because Black, who gives off a strong heterosexual vibe, is aware that the person he finds hopelessly alluring is also a man. Yet he persists. He is mightily attracted to Sweet Girl the lap-dancer, and that’s going to be the way it is. The intensity of Black junior’s erections dictates where this attraction is supposed to go. But this is not a love story, and Abani is resolute about not having any resolution.

Our hero obviously has Big Issues That Need Addressing rooted in his childhood traumas. If he hasn’t tired you out yet, maybe the flashbacks to his childhood will spring you back to life. His AIDS-afflicted mother is vicious—she makes the young Black perform self-flagellation in front of an altar, while his father is a confounding, ghostly presence—there, not quite there and finally, not there at all. Suddenly you think you know what this freak’s real issue is. You think you can finally feel satisfied with Black’s coming to terms with his misfortunes because he’s dealing with his feelings at last and working toward straightening out his life! But no.

If you’re exactly the kind of person who enjoys sneering at artist types, being unable to relate to them, this book may serve as an eye-opener or an entertainment featuring a gallery of freaks. You may not find anything to relate to, but its strangeness is a thing to behold. I don’t think I could trust anyone else to describe for me the rituals of strip-dancing and the art of tucking balls and shaft in one’s butt other than the seemingly demented Chris Abani.

The Virgin of Flames is a different kind of tale of self-discovery, one that doesn’t care much about reaching any discernible discovery. If you’re tired of tales of ditzy young girls and boys trying to find their luck in Hollywood, New York, or some other glamorous city, try this and have a balls-clutching experience. If you’re exasperated with small-town persons finding their way in the big, mean city, you may find a trip to Black’s lap-dance and alcohol-addled junction wildly entertaining. If anything, you’ll learn how to tuck your balls in your butt should the need for that ever arise in your boring life.

Dear Josephs

Dear Joseph,

I don’t know if that letter was for me but I’d like to fantasize that it is. So here I am claiming it. If it turns out it’s for a different person, boo hoo Mr Me.

It’s great to hear you’re in a very positive place. If I never realized it before, I realize now that every time I ask you how you’re doing I’m really asking how I’m doing. You should have told me. 

Anyway, I don’t want to steal your epistolary blog thunder so I intend to keep this short as fuck. Besides, I write you letters all the time in some of my notebooks and I’m much more effusive there and this is certainly cheap by comparison. In fact, here’s an excerpt especially for you:

Dear Joseph,

In case you’ve actually been missing me one of your best friends in the whole of southern Luzon aka Paranaque, I just want you to know that I mildly regret not being there at our home base because, you know. But Joseph, there are things you do that make it easier for me to not feel so bad when situations arise that you seem to be in need of a Paranaque friend and I’m unable to comply.

…

2.) You’re distant when you’re with boyfriend. It’s true. I think I prefer you when you’re despondent and needy or  deep. Because at least when you’re all of these, YOU TEXT. Although of course I only want what’s best for you, pogi, and that might include the absolute cutest person of interest so that your absence in my life will be more than justified, it will be a cause for celebration.

Etc.

Don’t freak. It’s not as if this is the most embarrassing thing I ever confessed to you. You know this isn’t! 

Toodles.

The Real Mes

I bought Christina Aguilera’s Stripped Live in the UK DVD because, and only because, it was on sale at Astrovision Glorietta. If you think about it, self, the only time you ever buy Xtina is when she’s on sale which happens to be all the time. She’s cheap lately. I got Back to Basics, Bionic and Greatest Hits CDs at bargain basement prices. I was also given a Burlesque soundtrack CD as a gift because it was on sale and because the giver is poor. Joke.

The DVD starts with Stripped Intro from the album Stripped, and it’s just the sort of concert intro you’d expect from her from a song called ‘Stripped’. In it are the proclamations of breaking free, independencehood and barriers overcomings, blehlehleh, the ceremonious pop star outpouring of true feelings and the image-peddling (no make-up, no hype, no gloss, no pretense, just me… stripped…). K. It was all expectedly edgy and okay because it was a pre-taped video of the Aguilera that’s about to unfold before the probably unwitting London Wembley Arena crowd and myself, since I bought and secured for myself the company of Xtina, even though I know money is precious.

The intro nicely (or whateverly) segues into Dirrty, probably my favorite Xtina song because it has a great, ear-oppressing beat and lyrics that I like, and suddenly I’m back at a place where I don’t find her super annoying. I like Dirrty live performances because I know in my heart that each time Dirrty gets a stage performance, the result will never be short of sluttily attired ladies and gentlemen gyrations. It is for me the Xtina song that just will never stop giving.

But by the time I get to Voice Within, the song which has a Positive Message, I realize and tell myself as if I haven’t already a million times before, why I find it hard to not mock her whether in my mind or with people with the same hobby, and here are the reasons why:

1. She really oversings. It’s true what the 1,723 music critics and blog trolls have been saying. I have no freshness in my thoughts right now so let this be my contribution to that movement.

2. She flickers her fingers in her mic which I find distracting. If that was meant to give her performance some sort of character, congrats for the attainment of just such a goal.

3. Her platitudes are outrageous. They are excessive and only ever slightly less irritating than her outrageous growls. She propels causes such as female empowerment – specifically that of being allowed to behave sluttily and being regarded not as such (slut) but as equals of slutty guys. She expounds the merits of an equal opportunity-giving society while showing ass and singing semi-filthy lyrics to a crowd of thousands.

4. She’s smug. Stop me with the ‘show don’t tell’ horseshit. I’m not the DVD.

5. It’s not her exclusive territory, the spouting of The Real Me grand announcements, but she is maybe the least convincing pop star to ever profess to the public that the real me is this nose pierce having growler and not the record label’s manufactured pop star that you see in your screens or wherever. This reminds me of the one and only Glitter, specifically the sequence where the music video director tells Billie Frank’s music video people, ‘the glitter must not overcome the artist!’ (or something), which unfortunately for Mariah, the Glitter overcame her in 2001. For ‘Tina, the goth aspirations era overcame the artist.

I really, really would rather have affectionate feelings for her instead of saying all these, but she makes it so hard. She almost wins me over for things like Get Mine, Get Yours aka Skank Persons’ Theme. I would say that UK Live is maybe the first time I ever appreciated Fighter as there were some great dancing in it. It’s usually hard for me to do, not hate Fighter, because when you listen to a Xtina song called Fighter you know there will be haterade renouncements, which if that’s your thing, you’ll get plenty of in Lotus. But what really bugs me about Xtina is the I don’t give a shit posing. The problem with acts and pronouncements of non-shit givings is that the shit tends to leak one way or the other. In short, she gives some version of shit whether she’s conscious of it or not. It is my hope that she commit.

Someone once told me that I am secretly a fan of hers. Two people, actually: myself and someone keenly observing my DVD/CD-buying patterns (which is basically guided by ‘say yes to cheapness’). I reason that the Christina Aguilera-hoarding is so that I can hate her more but actually it feels more like hope. Christina Aguilera is maybe the person I encounter everyday that I don’t exactly want to tolerate because my heart is clearly a forgiving and tolerant heart, and so I tolerate anyway. None of which matters because loudly and clearly, words won’t bring Xtina down.