quick quick recap of the things so far

   Lenten season: Only one word is enough of a description, bumming. No, I wasn't able to meditate and reflect about life or faith in general. So yeah I was uhhh... I did not take advantage of the quiet. I was normal -watching anime vcds/dvds during Black Saturday and Easter Sunday, w/c set the holiness of the weekend into mere normalcy.

   Monday: First day of summer madness began at 7 in the morning, with Sociology 101 as the first class. I arrived at school with five minutes to spare only to find out that the professor wasn't coming to class anytime soon. While my 11-1pm STS, on the other hand, started as scheduled, and can be described as random flitting images of crowding people, of people talking loudly for the almost painful struggle of finding groupmates.

   today

   At last, Socio 101 prof appears and she seems to be normal and funny. For a second there when I had been waiting for the prof's arrival, I thought I'd be stuck with another one of those profs that err -let's just say I get unlucky with profs sometimes. I got into a decent group in STS and all seems fairly well. I just need to sort out my sched a bit cause things kept on popping up and getting in the way of each other, that the only possible solution to make everybody happy and unstressed is for me to grow another appendage and I'll reproduce an exact copy of myself through fission -or something. But yes, it appears I have slowly settled into summer.

   Earlier, just before heading for SM, Tina and I managed to make a quick pass through the 2nd iBlog summit. We caught up with Dean Alfar's very entertaining and informative talk and got ourselves filled with caffeine and more caffeine thanks to the iced tea. The one thing that stuck with me (other than the errr... very quotable quote I won't mention because later on people would start blogging about it anyway) is that talent could only take you so far (and I don't even have much of a talent to speak of). It's the discipline that gets you through writing (and according to Tina, through major endeavors as well, like ehem loosing weight). And discipline happens to be the thing I am most lacking, as attested by the fact I get tempted and distracted easily by things, which in turn can be proven by the poking flabs hanging here and there in my torso. Yes, a realization. So now as a challenge to myself I'll try to be more disciplined in things, and I mean in all things: money-spending, studies, etc... Really. I'm going to do it. Watch me. ^___^

   Bored as hell. After the registration -where things went amazingly well even with all my initial ranting and screaming about- I ended up particularly exhausted of things to do and to angst about. And since it's Holy Week, I guess I have to get used to the nonexistence of things to do and enjoy the not-so-quiet. Might as well try to contemplate and reflect on life in general.

****

   The Lenten season generally reminds me of gray and snow-spotted tv screens, of silence, of held back laughter, of beliefs and praying. I was once told off from playing during Holy week back when I was a child, that it was bad to dribble a basketball for thoughts concerning hurting Christ from all that dribbling. I thought God was in the ground or something so I stopped playing. I thought then too, that every year during Friday of the Holy week, Jesus Christ dies, rises on the third day, then dies again next year on that same Friday. Back then I cried and became all solemn cause I knew all along that he was dying again somewhere, back in that little hill.

   I used to relish those drawn out silences, the hushed whispers of the old, the slow looping song of a pabasa. But now, as the Holy Week starts to slide in and as I wait for that slow settling of silence and grieving, that type of solemn quiet never really comes. And now I am stuck here watching commercials and anime at a Holy Wednesday, wondering if anything will come to any quiet this week what with all the vacationing and tv-watching of people.

   The pre-summer headaches get fully blown into actual, summer registration, headaches. I can't enlist manually in Math 100 since I forgot my Math 11's & 14's classcards. And it's not the forgetting that's giving me problems. I just realized that I have no physical proof (a classcard) that I removed my 4 in Math 14 last summer. The only classcards that are with me are my Math 11's 2.75 and my previous Math 14 classcard with the encircled 4 -no way are they going to let me enlist in Math 100.

   I tried contacting my prof for some help regarding coming up with proof that I did pass her Math 14. But my text messages remain unanswered and I am sinking into semi-depression. I know some people have it worse than me -like not being able to eat or having a life and death situation- but I cannot think or give any care of them as of this moment. I'm just absorbed with every blasted thing happening to me right now. And my head hurts from all this thinking I'm damn doing.

   I could enlist for an elective instead but the problem is I don't have anything I like at the moment. And I just can't enroll just one GE for the summer -that would be a complete waste of money. If I don't do summer classes at all, I'll have two semesters with 21 units of load and that's a complete pain. Isn't it becoming increasingly obvious that I have this great aversion to pain and hard work?

   Ugh. I feel so selfishly self-absorbed. I'm starting to think that maybe God is giving me this stuff just to shake me out from being too complacent. Or is it being too stagnant? I don't know. I just want to stop worrying for one thing and stop this worsening headache.

   There's no more dvd left to watch. I've finished the gargantuan 51 episodes of Bleach just a few days ago, rewatched my Kim Sam Soon dvds last Thursday, gone through repeated readings of my Dirk Gently/Douglas Adams books, and watched my Gokusen vcds for the sheer boredness of it all.

   Now all that's left for me to do is waste in front of the PC and continually download those boy-to-boy mangas I used to really love, which most of them turned out to be plotless conundrums ending in half-expected smuttiness (I say half-expected since I usually give chances to stories up until the last page). They were a few gems alright. Yuki Shimizu's Love Mode is still the best for angsty reading though I don't like the art much. Pretty artwork awards go to Ayano Yamane for almost all of her work (pure smut or otherwise) and to Sumomo Yumeka's pretty boys and pretty angel wings. 

   So what's under my category of plotless conundrums ending in half-expected smuttiness? I'm pretty much okay with recycled plots: boy-saves-another-boy, boys-get-together-for-a-bet, boy-gets-mistaken-as-girl, bestfriends-turned-lovers - they're a staple in the yaoiness of things. I just don't like it when the author does some brainless excuse for doing smuttiness, or makes the characters into brainless beings... I mean, what kind of person -be it a boy or a girl- forgives his stepfather with a full genuine smile after being obviously taken against his will (and was truly traumatized by it) 24 hours earlier? Does a simple sorry cut it? And why would some guy rape another guy just because he saw a cute virtual monkey (which represented the raped guy) doing some disturbing, ecchi, things to itself on a computer screen with a virtual mushroom and a banana? Please explain these things to me.

   Maybe its some kind of yaoi fetish or something. Yes. A dumb and brainless uke fetish? It's okay if the uke's just clueless or plain dense -that's the essence of an uke anyway, being slightly taken advantage of. But. But. Brainlessness is just wrong. And stupid. 

   So, now I'm ranting about the mental faculties of fictitious characters in comics? Maybe I'm just bored to death with real life right now.  

   The free piano lessons (the extracurricular thingies I'm supposed to be doing this summer) officially started last Wednesday. It just so happened that with the free piano lessons I'm taking I'm also required to attend a one-hour bible study. It was all fine and dandy except for one fatal fact: my teacher in piano lessons and the one in the bible study are both full-pledged Koreans.

   I'm not discriminating them or anything nasty. They're kind and very amusing to watch. The piano teacher vaguely reminds me of Kim Sam Soon with her no-nonsense attitude, while the bible study guy brings Korean comedians to mind. Again, it just so happened that I am having a lot of trouble understanding them since they speak broken english. Everytime they try to converse with me is like risking a mild case of nosebleeding -I must concentrate all my mental faculties on catching context clues or the meaning completely escapes me.

   Case in point: the first Bible study session. Bible study guy goes through a step by step process of introducing to us the subject matter, the Bible, until we came upon a parable told by Jesus to Peter. The parable goes somewhat like this (please excuse my rough recollection): Who would pay for the taxes of the King's son? The son or the others?. In which Peter answers with 'others'. The guy then proceeds to analyze this little parable and discover its actual meaning: Who did this 'others' refer to?. Our answers ranged from nonbelievers to nonbelievers, which turned out to be far from the correct answer.

   The correct answer? 'Others is Juice People!', announced the Bible study guy which I responded to with utter silence. His sudden exclamation reminded me of dancing life-size Zesto packs, and I thought that this was an imagery completely unrelated to the Bible at the moment. Why would tetra packs of juice pay taxes at a time they haven't existed yet? Then the meaning dawns on me as the guy scribbles 'Jews' on the white board below the 'others'. Aaaahhhh.

   After that, I couldn't stop myself from smiling too much as he continued with the lesson. I just couldn't get the dancing Zesto packs out of my mind.

*******

   Strange. Earlier today I prepared my usual iced coffee drink, the one I had been hoarding like crazy for the past few weeks, planning to drink it slowly in front of the telly to relax myself for the afternoon. I took one sip and then- bleaaaacccckhhh- it suddenly tasted horrible for me. I never noticed something new from the taste just- I don't like it anymore. I tried to drink it again but I couldn't stand it so I just poured it in the sink. What's wrong with my taste buds today? Is it the end of my love affair with coffee?  

   Or this could also be titled, 'Why I hate CRS?'.

   This morning I checked the last round of preenlistment for CRS this summer to see if I got anything out of it other than the previously enlisted STS, which I hadn't really planned for in the beginning. What I really really needed for this summer was Math 100 and I was hoping I got in, any schedule would damn do. What do I get?

   I logged in and glared at the screen that blatantly replied, "no you don't get the freaking math subject and you're stuck with this 11-1pm STS unless you sweat and fall in line for it come registration day". I logged out and logged in again just so I could check if this was one of those dream sequences again. (I did dream about checking my sched on CRS, I just couldn't remember what my sched looked like. Now I know.)

   Well, there are many good reasons why I hate CRS. One, it messed up a perfectly planned schedule for summer classes: math and science in the mornings, piano lessons in the afternoon. Two, it makes me do a lot of unnecessary work, which I normally avoid at all cost, like enlisting the subjects I want through manual labor. But that's all due to my inherent laziness and bitterness on everything not going my way.  

   I just wish I could manually enlist a slot for math 100. Then I could go on griping about math again.

P.S. I peeked my grades on the online viewing at CRS. And I think part of my pissed-offness today could be attributed to my low grades. Drat.

   I spent half of my day rolling and sleeping on the sheets. The other half I spent on a Bleach dvd marathon. I'm definitely doing unproductive things today and that pretty much sums up my official descent into bumdom.

   I was actually set to get out of the house earlier this morning to splurge my newly changed money (remember the 40 dollars? I guess I didn't stay torn for too long). But unfortunately, my Dad got the fever so we decided to just stay at home and rest for a while. Weird. Tina also managed to get a little fever yesterday. Does this mean I'm next? *scrambles for some hiding place*

   I'm really really bored at home. There's not much to watch on tv. I can't rewatch my dvds all the time. And reading books doesn't make the time go any faster. Is this the curse of being a bum? Searching endlessly for things to do?

   I know I'm going to hate myself this coming June when it happens but, I just wish that classes would start really really soon so I could love being a bum again.

   And back to hating schoolwork.

******

   You know, in your mouth, there's just a bit of everything you've experienced for that day: your delicious lunch, the smell of that shawarma you last ate, the soft peck made on someone dear, that bile left by a suppressed emotion. It's all there, the mouth acting like a holder of perceived memories. And at the end of the day you try to clean all of it, try to cover the traces of it with that minty toothpaste. The brushing could be for preparation, like clearing a space for new things. Maybe simply for hygiene's sake. 

   But sometimes we try so hard to get rid of the taste that when we spit out that foamy blob it isn't pure white. A blurry of red appears, swirls until it grows darker and darker into the center. 

   The only things that keep me up and above the thing called boredom would be my dvds, my new book conquests, and some extracurricular learning that seems to be floating and drifting at the start of my summer. Yes. There's no more homework to be busy with (And when did I ever get busy with homeworks? Unless it was for Psych 115, I'd be sleeping through it like a log.) and I've got two weeks to bum around and be some lower lifeform before summer classes push through. 

   My 2nd semester officially ended without a hitch; my last and final paper for my Psych 115 (there goes that major again) was finished at 3pm and was dropped off at the department around 4pm. Technical papers are not exactly my forte ever since that Philo incident (my prof called me illogical -how appropriate) but writing that final paper was not as hard as I thought it would be. There certainly is some hard work involved yet I felt strangely organized  and so-not-me when I was writing the paper. It felt right. I mean, I was writing something logical and straight to the point without the blurriness of fiction and hiding behind the masks. Then, I realized that I enjoyed doing this kind of things too. I want to keep on doing it. Along with my other frustrations, of course. Now I am much more confused in what I'm going to do in my life than when I was four. I should've stucked to becoming a nun. And since that one man I told my nun dream to when I was four died quite a while ago, it's too late and I cannot go back.

    Why do we want to be so many things all at the same time? Or is it just me? 

   Maybe I need to stop worrying about the future. If it happens, it happens. I'll just try to believe that everything will fall into place.

*****

   Somewhere I smelled a stink of fish. Now I can name it in five letters.    

Randomness# 15??

The Tattoo Artist

You came to me with your skin,
an empty slate, wanting to
wear his brand on your sleeve.
This is love, you said as you
bared the blank canvas.
And you were willing to
pay its price with this
black blood.

Yet when my pen,
burned, carved the stigma into
your flesh like sharp nails, you
neither called out his name
nor for that love that brough you here.

It is my hands you will
remember. And the pain.
For who was it you clinged to,
cried for, as I cut each bloody letter
into the skin that will never
know my name?

   For the past week, after I had splurged my money on books and several copies of *ehem ehem* Korean movies, I feel strangely poorer than usual. Still with various items to buy in mind, I planned for ways to get cash, which includes (a) working as part-time tutor during summer (b) maybe encoder in places that needs one (c) begging in the streets. But suddenly, because of events that transpired last Saturday afternoon, I now stand in my room with 2 20 dollar bills in my hand, 2 baseball caps, a binder, and a new blue shirt.

   I now feel very very blessed and think that God really really loves me now. But with all this unexpected money handed to me without any warning, I am again strangely torn between spending it all to keeping it to myself for future, more productive, buys.

   *****

    I hate summer. I hate the heat. The one thing that keeps me from going haywire and flying to another country would be (1) things don't go any colder just by me complaining about them (2) I don't have enough money to fly into another country anyway. I'm literally sweating buckets here. And people won't surely like me if I'm sweaty and irritated and hotheaded from all that heat. I want some weather-control thingy so we could have snow here just once. I miss the cold weather =(