We’re lazy

I should just admit to them that I’m truly a moron by heart and by deed. That what I really aspire to is to sell hotcakes in Bangkok where everything is pleasantly spicy. That I might never progress as an average worker because me and the average 9-year old have the exact same set of ambitions, both in scope and intensity. Me and the nine-year old, we’re not even sure what we really truly want, except to sleep for hours, undisturbed.  And not face computer monitors except to facebook, para magpa-cool. What would get Us busy is to think about the best, most attention-grabbing status messages with which we’d immediately comment back should anyone find the need to actually give us the attention we crave. We’d spend hours blogging, we’d take our pagpapa-cool a step higher because we are at least aware that there is only so much time and devotion we could expend on facebooking and status-updating. We’d definitely feel the need to compose long essays about books that caught our fancies. We may be lazy but we’d read a lot.

BJ

I am working very hard right this very instant because I am a devout consumer of consumer goods. I would still consume and consume good after I get out of this antiseptic office. I get calls from credit card companies who are insistently begging me to get into even more debt. I want to say puking-ina nyo but I cant because my seatmate will hear me. Sometimes this is what working in a corporate environment amounts to. Work till you die. Work til you develop stress bumps on the scalp. Work and deal with credit card promoters. The sad thing is that I will work til the day I stop wanting to consume but I wont stop working because I wont die. I’ll just forever be hassled by Metrobank. I want to quit. I want to pull a Tom Mota. My whining goes beyond wanting to have a reason to say, ‘I want to pull a Tom Mota’. Sure, I quote a lot and it’s annoying and plastic-sounding most of the time, but I sincerely want to pull a Tom Mota, or an almost Tom Mota. I want to smash this HP PC into the window and hope it lands in the head of a CEO. But I cant because I have to leave by 6 because I Have to treat myself to a CD. Or beer.

Shelf life

Mine is the bookshelf of an absolute phony. The kind of phony who sleeps better at night knowing that the books sleep beside him, which in his own phony mind make him an impressive book collector. It is truly one of the most show-offy looking collection of books I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know why I do this, collect books and never read them again (with the exception of David Sedaris and maybe a few Bret Easton Ellis, and JD Salinger – for sure), and place them exactly where I sleep. Not exactly in the bed but very near to it. Needless to say, it’s an inconvenient arrangement as some of them tend to fall whenever I turn around the bed violently. In the first place, no one ever takes interest in anybody’s book shelf. My bookshelf’s really a substitute for things, body parts mostly, that I can’t improve. But no one’s impressed.

I remember going to the Read or Die convention and seeing what I thought was a first edition Coraline. I never cared for Neil Gaiman and it’s a puzzle to me afterwards why I ever asked the book seller if it was truly a first edition. I bought it and was only mildly heartbroken that it didn’t turn out to be first or second or even a third edition. If there ever was a hierarchy for a book’s value, the Coraline I got was definitely somewhere in the 20^th tier. Serves me right for being such a wannabe geek. I have a William Faulkner book squeezed in between Booksale-bought Augusten Burroughs and I just know that the Faulkner serves no other purpose than to decorate. I kind of thought that having Light in August, in Between Burroughs and Sedaris is impressively diverse. A stupid perception, of course. But it’s there and it’s going to be there until I find another highbrow book to replace it with.

I also thought that being the kind of person who owns Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is impressive. I could only come up with this conclusion:  I have exactly 5 shirts that I look good in and nothing else that makes me look impressive so this book shelf pimping must be my way of coping up with the very social need of a 24 year old to appear impressive. Are you bored yet? This sentiment bores me too. Maybe I gathered all those books not because I want to be super literate or super poor but because I want to live in my room forever. It might also be because I want to be the type of blowhard who casually quotes from unheard of literary works because my head would simply implode if I try to casually mention anything that happened in real life. But just maybe.

I remind me of the college kid in Catherine Crawford’s JD Salinger essay collection If You Really Want to Hear About It, who may or may not have brought JD Salinger’s Nine Stories at a frat party, and who may or may not have been reading the book unironically. Because really, what could be phonier than a JD Salinger book at a frat party. But then again, if you’ve encountered more than The Catcher in the Rye in the very slim Salinger catalogue, you’ll know that his books are pretty mobile. They’re these small, inconspicuous books that you’d have no problem bringing in clubs or frat parties, for when all the drinking and general craziness bored you. Like the college kid, I may be aiming for an effect. Something that sounds like Wow, You have the 21 Uncollected Short Stories of super author JD Salinger. You’re Very Impressive. But no, it never happens. Every time I direct somebody’s attention to the room and ultimately to the book shelf, I try to magnify their attention to them with the success rate of an umbrella salesman in a pleasantly cloudy day. And as Ms Crawford funnily puts it, I didn’t have the people’s vote as an interesting person, which is, I have to admit, one grand statement from a self-proclaimed uninteresting person. The People’s Vote? Have I really gotten that deluded? Don’t answer. Only smirk. But I’m fine with being uninteresting. And I love all those paper on shelves. I should just try to learn not to crowd David, Bret and JD with phony-ass authors like Kerouac and Faulkner. But if you think my books and book shelf are pretentious, examine my CDs. You’ll puke. And maybe phonily congratulate me for trying very, very hard.

Doctors are your enemies

They really are. My doctors are especially evil. Not really evil but just jerks. One poked my head with wooden popsicle sticks presumably because she just came from lunch and she didn’t want to lay her hands on anything aside from her panties. After the poking session, she obnoxiously told me that she couldn’t do anything about my hairy situation because it looks hopeless and because she’s a snotty bitch who’s too high and mighty to touch head disease-suffering patients’ heads. She then ordered me to buy expensive as shit treatment from her own clinic right after she crushed any hope of me being cured. Just when I thought I’ve heard the worse from her, she went on to prescribe expensive as shit antibiotics which is one of the best ways to prevent anyone from boozing. I have yet to know the dangers of disregarding that rule but I’d love to go back to her clinic, even sicker than I was there last, and make her feel sorry for not telling me not to drink alcohol while taking antibiotics, all the while puking at her feet because I’m fully aware that alcohol and antibiotics together will fuck your excretory and digestive systems and that puking and constant shitting are inevitable once those two systems are fucked.

 

But dentists are even worse. They are such money drainers. They’d sell you their soul if they had them by their clinics. They’d even have them in glass display cases. That’s a corny way to put it but I really think they would. Why was I ever born unperfect? This imperfection is highlighted by these set of random slightly yellow things that I call teeth. My main beef with these yellow things is that they don’t seem to like me very much which is why they move out. I only need one fake tooth to get me through this dental problem but about three doctors told me, all-knowingly, naturally, that I’d need to get braces, which I can have done after I get oral surgery in order to patch certain gaps, which is probably the correct diagnosis, but which would make an even wider gap in my ’savings’. I sometimes wish I lived in the 50s.

 

But not all doctors are bad. There are those who just happen to be very old. There was that one doctor who was sensible enough to consult from a book of drugs before she prescribed anything. She asked me lots of questions, not too dopey and it seemed normal enough so I went along with her. But then it felt like I was feeding her my own diagnosis. It’s a long and boring story but she didn’t seem able to deduce anything from all the shit from I’ve told her. She’s an old lady doctor who’s better off baking cookies for her grandkids who would all get sick because she doesn’t know how to bake. And then it’s her turn, doctor grandma to feel hopeless. Saying all these brings me to an undeniable conclusion: I’m sick because I’m mean.

 

I’m seeing another doctor from a better hospital. I’m crossing my fingers on this one because she’s supposed to be good. I don’t know why she’s supposed to be good but she should be. But I don’t know too how and why she should be. I was at her clinic and she actually made a bad impression on me already because she showed up 1 and a half hour late. I know. Who do I think I am? I’m Peter, if you really want to know. And Peter is really sick right now. But some doctors are sicker. Please wish me well.

Without you I’m nothing

It’s true, I’m passionless. I’m unable to even defend my drinking. Just when I thought I’ve finally found the one thing that I could really get into – intoxication – and I had to stop. Some doctor tells me I need to stop boozing and I do it. I stop. And for what. Just because I had weeks of excruciating and non-stop stomach pain doesn’t mean I should stop being passionate about something that was well on its way to giving me some semblance of a character. Where I used to be the boy who likes very much to drink beer, I’m now just someone who bitches about not being able to drink. Worse, I’m now someone who gets sick because of beer. This is really tragic because I can’t imagine having the appropriate amount of fun without precious beer. This couldn’t be. Dicking around for friends’ affections is not one of my corny passions but in certain groups, alcohol consumption is crucial. If I don’t take it, I’m quiet. If I’m quiet, I might as well not be there. This thought worries me sometimes because I come off as either a snob or a dimwit. None of which are flattering although both are definitely character defining. Which reminds me of the time I was with Joseph’s gays. A really smart gay pointed out that if I were to perish, there’d come a day when the same group of gays would have some gay, or maybe just normal conversation, and one of them would go, ‘Who was that gay who just sat while we all blabbed?’, to which most would answer, ‘Beats my gay ass’. Even in the after life I would worry about something as sad as this. I should be fine now. It’s been 3 or 4 weeks since I last saw the doctors and 3 weeks since I was made to foolishly spend on medication. I had to see 2 doctors because I need one for my scalp tumor and another one for the stomach disease. Both diseases were highly annoying to me since they get in the way of my necessary activities, ie drinking and push ups. The diseases aren’t really diseases. The tumor isn’t really tumor. They are highly exaggerated, petty illnesses that force me to stop doing that which I love. Mostly because of the expensive medicines. They deserve to be called ‘tumor’ and ‘disease’, which both sound heavy to me, because they are burdens and burdens deserve to be assoiated with tumors and diseases. I haven’t even reached that point in a decidedly drunken person’s life where people would ask me to ‘get help’ which would truly sound corny. No one would actually suggest a rehab trip because it’s just not done by the middle class, working class types but I’m definitely thinking of reaching that level of problematic habitual state of drunkenness. I imagine hearing pleas from friends, ‘Peter, please stop. We care for you’, or ‘Peter, you need to see a doctor’. It would be very dramatic but it would be an interesting achievement. But stupid stomach ache happened. Antibiotics were prescribed. Credit cards were maxed out. Eating habits were questioned. And drinking habits were halted. The weighing scale says I weigh 130 lbs. I gained weight even without the beer. So I now realize it’s been a stupid decision to take up drinking as if it’s a serious devotion. Even more stupid to use beer as weight-gain supplement. Evolution!

Bret Easton Ellis Philippines

I tried to join Anne Rice Philippines in hopes of having friends. Joke lang. I joined it because it was recommended by a credible geek and because I looked at their site and there are some nice looking people in there. Also, I like Anne Rice. Maybe not as much as I did back in college, when I really tried to ignore the ‘homoerotic undertones’ in the books. That was truly the height of denial. I am relatively less dense and more accepting now, which is to say that I now fully realize how homosexually oriented The Vampire Chronicles are and so it’s fitting that I join it, the ARP. It’s a little depressing to me how I’m less interested in them now because I’m not sure if I’ll be very, very interested in anything again now that I’m so old and imbalanced.

 

This fall out with Anne began when I started reading other stuff. It turns out that there’s more to life than vampire fiction/architectural monologue/furniture catalogue novelizations. And of course there is. There’s Catcher in the Rye. There is also American Psycho. I’m almost done with the Bret Easton Ellis catalogue of coke lit. I can’t wait for him to write the next best vampire literature since Anne Rice’s Memnoch the Devil. If this were to happen, the Bret Easton Ellis vampires would redefine vampire lit. His vampires would be cokeheads whose idea of a good time is to eat each other out (genitals), sniff coke all night long and namedrop the hardbodies they’ve sucked. They will hunt not in alleys but in nightclubs where they can ‘do lines’ in bathrooms. They might not suck blood even. They will not suck, period. Only sniff. But I truly believe that this is never going to ever happen ever because Bret Easton Ellis is not as talented at ruining vampire lore as, say, Stephanie Meyer.

 

I was just thinking of how clever it would be to associate passionlessness with Bret Easton Ellis’ 80s novel, The Rules of Attraction where the characters are so… passionless. So here goes: I am passionless. I may have flunked the entrance exams for Anne Rice Philippines. I didn’t even know what sire refers to in vampire-speak. So to associate, I was thinking of founding instead Bret Easton Ellis Philippines where members’ loyalties are to be tested by how passionless they are willing to become. Like in Rules of Attraction, all you have to really be is someone who blabbers. You can go on and on about a silly fixation and it would be fine. Anyone who introduces himself as bisexual is to be hacked into tiny bits, dick first, Bateman-style. Hot lesbians are to be granted first class status because I already know two of these breed and because favoritism in Bret Easton Ellis Philippines (BEEP) will be widely tolerated. Wearing of school colors will not.

 

Since there’s almost no single unifying characteristic to all of Bret Ellis’ characters, and since coke sniffing is expensive and too American, anyone can just be their absolutely boring selves. Only requirement would be the ability to quote a passage from any of his books, excluding The Informers, because I don’t care for short story collections.

 

I know. It’s not clever enough. But if I could just muster enough passion I’m sure it could work.

All About Chemistry

My only real purpose for desiring to drink in abnormal amounts is that so I could gain weight. I don’t have a larger and more significant agenda. It’s also not an attempt to look cute. Only a few guys can pull off the adorable-chubby look and I’m sadly not one of them. Bianca, a girl I once foolishly thought of going out with, pointed out that I’d look like an absolute butete if I pursue this hobby. She’s sweet. I once heard the story of my ex-girlfriend’s father and how he became the Fat Man I saw him as and I briefly and stupidly aimed to look exactly like him, minus the bad skin, which I’m starting to develop anyway, once we get married. They say that guys who used to be pencil-thin can miraculously turn into a giant fat-ass if and when taken excellent care of by their wives. Needless to say, no one would be willing to take on that responsibility because I seriously like guys. But I’d like to delude myself a little sometimes and think that maybe there’s still hope.

I’m still stuck at 120 pounds and it sucks. I try to eat everything served on a plate and wax paper. Drinking beer before meals is cruel to the liver but to the stomach, it is a riot. Sometimes work feels like a trap. It’s a trap but it affords me the beer. I don’t like the warmness of hard liquor because it’s warm in Manila as it is so I’m strictly a beer person. I think it really runs in the family because my father scoffs (not really) at other liquor types. I once got him a Marks & Spencer wine for his birthday and he used it as decoration. But I don’t think wine warms you up. My father may have intended for the wine to age and I was tempted to point out that sticking a wine in the cupboard at room temperature does not constitute the proper wine-aging process. Naturally, I don’t wish to spite my father who is himself a hopeless drunk, by drinking (almost) every night.

Me and drinking started getting serious when I was at my most despondent. I can’t recall exactly when I was at My Most Despondent but it’s probably when I started to seriously consider reenacting scenes from American Psycho because I had so much unexplained drama. This is of course false. Patrick Bateman is way out of my league. I could never ape his deeds. I can’t recall the time but me and beer had chemistry. We had spark. Just like Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas. A hooker and a drunkard shacking up together in Las Vegas to try and simulate a happy couple life is about as plausible as that same drunkard trying to ditch drinking by joining a Christian worship group. It’s a weak analogy but you get the idea. It can probably work, if you think about it. A drunk can’t get his dick up all the time because almost all the energy is spent on trying to work up an appetite for the night’s binge and the typical whore is probably so spent on all the sex she’s had so this relationship is probably the most sensible of all relationships.

I like this movie very much. It’s definitely overkill to watch this movie and drink at the same time but that’s the kind of effect it had on me. Now I know why there’s censorship. Me and my juvenility (sabi nga ni Transit Counter). The reference to this movie is not just a passing one. I just wasn’t sure how to talk about the film. I saw it this afternoon and it made me want to drink. Mike Figgis, or whoever else is responsible seem to try to point out that getting drunk is not necessarily such a bad thing which explains the festive, jazzy, laidback soundtrack. I totally agree with that hypothetical point. It could be that people simply give more thought to addiction (pardon the term) to drinking than is necessary. It could be that alcohol is the actual root of all evil. I don’t really know. I’m too drunk to care. My point is that it feels very good when you’re drunk. You don’t need a powerful film to point that out for you.

Month of the Living Dead

I briefly considered getting Comic Book Tattoo (a comic book dedicated to the songs of Tori Amos) because not having it would mean sleepless nights. I ended up not buying it because I was exhausted from the lengthy trips I’ve been having since Thursday and I am fine with this resulting exhaustion because the trips involved consuming. I’m unable to sleep now because when I go to Glorietta tomorrow, Comic Book might not be there anymore. I actually can’t sleep for entirely different reasons. For example, I’m home. I’m beginning to be bothered by this inexplicable need to be home. I don’t even like my house very much. Whenever I’m in it, all I could really think about is what to consume next. Comics are not my favorite things to buy but buying and collecting them is something to do.

Another insomnia causer is Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End. I also think about getting Watchmen #1 but it seems lavish to spend 3000 on comics in a span of one week. There’s a striped, very nice, very cottony hood jacket at Rustan’s which would look equally nice with the cargo shorts I bought. The cargo shorts are so snug they make my crotch look imposing than it actually is, just the way I like it. I think about getting another ill-fitting jeans from Rustans because it’s flashy and nice but I haven’t even worn the shorts yet because I prefer staying at home. A new cellphone would also look pogi. So would a new Aldo or Traffic loafers. I consider getting a Gap white slim fit shirt but wearing Gap majorly announces to the world that you’re the type of person who… wears Gap.

Books I intend to buy or steal: 

• Slam by Nick Hornby
• The Catcher in the Rye expensive edition
• If You Really Want to Hear About It (JD Salinger essays)
• The Chuck Klosterman novel
• The Anne Rice memoir
• Some Roald Dahl smut

I think of buying stereo or speakers for my room so I can justify the many CDs I have. Having a new stereo would make it seem less ridiculous for wanting to get even more CDs. My discman is showing signs of surrender and I can just imagine why.

CDs I intend to buy or solicit: 

• Midnight Boom by The Kills
• Third Eye Blind
• OMFGG No. 1
• Third by Portishead
• Another Drifter in the Snow by Aimee Mann

It’s December and many people are living through their worst nightmare. The Manila traffic is very, very bad and people act accordingly. It’s supposed to be Winter in the Philippines but MRT, FX and jeep commuters, exactly the ones I sit next to, are twice as sweaty and grimy. Businesses are greedier and services are lousier. For me though, it’s not so bad. I still owe some people money but my net worth has at least improved because the Philippines-exclusive year-end bonus pay, which I think is unheard of in other countries, enabled me to pay 2-year old debts. I have no proof of this but it’s nice to think it. Money, no matter what people say, still rules. Ayn Rand was not just being a nay saying hard-ass when she said in Atlas Shrugged that money is not really the root of all evil. And I’m not just being pa-intellectual when I cite familiarity with Atlas Shrugged. This is hardly an intelligent thought. Everybody knows that money is truly very nice.

I intend to become a completely mindless consumer this month. Sometimes I just intend to be mindless. Year-end promises are corny but I intend to have That Much Joy In My Life for the last month of 2008 by pigging out on consumer goods. But just thinking about it makes me feel poor already.

I’m very sorry but this is bullshit

I’m sorry but this was bullshit. Bow.

Closing my blog because I was worried someone unworthy is reading it? Because of some unfounded suspicion, I decide to just cut it all off: the life-affirming comments, the awesome online friendship I worked so hard for to develop? The fear can’t possibly be worth it.

It’s just an effing blog. It’s just total bullshit to castrate an otherwise amazingly adverb-happy blog. If I meet me in person, I probably wouldn’t like me either. If I were someone I know and I came across this, I’d probably hate me twice as much. But that’s that. Let’s all be wise enough and use our university-educated heads and learn how to switch to another goddamned site if and when something awfully revealing assaults our pretty eyes.

WordPress is truly an amazing platform for my phoniness. It said to me after months of chickening out, Welcome Back, Holdencaulfieldisms. I can not help but weep. If WordPress were something huggable, I’d have hugged it so hard it would have had a hard-on even if it were straight. Which it obviously isn’t because what kind of a straight dude provides platforms for hopelessly fagggy wannabes who cultivate online friendship? Almost none.

Please understand that none of this was ever intended for gimmickry. There’s very little gimmickry involved, if any. I just got worried. The pretty eyes are probably directed towards something else as we speak.

I know that blogs are just supposed to be extensions of who we are. Somebody super Zen-like once told me that and I took that to heart. Because that’s the kind of blogger I am, the kind that almost always takes to heart some stranger’s attempt at wisdom. But the Boddhisatva wannabe’s claim proved to be very true. ‘Blog’ is not even recognized in Microsoft Word as a proper term. Blogs like fucked session are never meant to be taken seriously. I’m so very sorry that I did.

Really

That’s all I’m going to tell about. I could probably tell you what I did after I went home, and how I got sick and all, and what school I’m supposed to go to next fall, after I get out of here, but I don’t feel like it. I really don’t. That stuff doesn’t interest me too much right now. A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I’m going apply myself when I go back to school next September. It’s such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don’t. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it’s a stupid question.

D.B. isn’t as bad as the rest of them, but he keeps asking me a lot of questions, too. He drove over last Saturday with this English babe that’s in this new picture he’s writing. She was pretty affected, but very good-looking. Anyway, one time when she went to the ladies’ room way the hell down in the other wing D.B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you about. I didn’t know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don’t know what I think about it. I’m sorry I told so many people about it. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.