Picturesque
Current mood: blank
Category: Life

New Year's Eve was perhaps one of my most refreshing experiences to date, simply because of the fact that it was also one of the most boring things I have ever been part of. I have decided to spend this "special" occasion with the people that I feel close affinity to, namely, my family and relatives back at Shenandoah. It was a homecoming of sorts, as it was the first time after almost six months that I'm going back there after doing stuffs that 26-year old women are supposed to be doing, which is beyond me.

I drove all the way from Ireton to arrive at my folk's place early in the morning at the last day of the year. Nothing changed. It's still the same homely two-story structure with a bland grass lawn. Christmas lights were everywhere, embedded on roofs, on the walls outside of the house. It's a good thing that they didn't put the horrendous Santa Claus on the roof just above the entrance door. My father finally thought that it looked shitty.

Everybody's still the same. My father still sports that mustache which is the envy of all Russian dictators, although his bulging belly and balding crown isn't something to scream about. My mother has celebrated New Year having her hair dyed black for the past five years, after she started to grow gray hair. My older brother Ronnie, still as grizzly as a bear, was with his wife Rhona, who happens to be a crass bitch and a lout, and I just want to strike her with a cleaver on the back of her neck. Don't worry, she knows how I feel.

As usual, after exchanging niceties with everybody, including my Aunt Norma, Jane, Frank, Lisbon, and Frannie with her two heavenly twin daughters Marcy and Mindy, I locked myself into my room. Apparently, this is the only place in this house that makes me feel like myself. Posters of Whitesnake, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Leonardo DiCaprio before committing career suicide with Titanic are still plastered on the walls and ceiling. There was no Internet connection at this household so I'll have to put my daily routine of checking my Myspace and Fling.com accounts on hold. What I did was watch Kubrick's aforementioned masterpiece on the VCR instead. It still worked. Breathtaking as ever, the film even got better as smoking the weed that I got Lisbon only accentuated the cosmic masturbations Kubrick purported in the movie. Like the slogan of the NBA during the 80s, it's FAN-tastic.

After dozing off while having the film play continuously, I woke up past 8 pm. Realizing that I was late for dinner, I hurried down the dining room and lay witness of a table defiled and desecrated by savage hands, with empty plates laid across the ravaged table like a plague sweeping a country. I was a mess when they saw me, with my hair uncombed and my shirt still unchanged since I got there. My mom told me that I had my room locked and that I was tired after my trip so they didn't go out of their way to wake me up. Fortunately, my mother was able to save me food that she prepared for dinner, salvaging what was left from the murderous scene. That's my mom for you.

The road to midnight was a painful one, although it was made easier by the wine and gin-tonic, the latter of which I brought along with me in case there was an "emergency." The evening was dominated by Rhonda boasting about her progress with her doctorate in Psychology which is impressive, to say the least. However, she's still a bitch, so I don't really care what she's doing with her shit life.

The evening, however, was highlighted by my heady conversations with Frank and Lisbon. Frank was fucking drunk after his third glass of gin-tonic, which is pathetic based on any standard. After not seeing each other for a while, Lisbon and I talked about how we would take pleasure in drowning Rhonda on a well filled with acid, and we talked about who among the celebrities we would sleep with (gimme Wentworth Miller and Hugh Laurie any time of the day, baby!) We forced the drunk Frank to answer our inane question on which celebrity he would sleep with, but it only made him hurl the turkey he had for dinner on the new carpet mom bought just this Holiday season. Lisbon and I simply laughed our asses off.

It was then that I realized it was past midnight already. I still managed to exchange greetings with everybody despite the alcohol already kicking in, except Frank of course, as he was lying on his own puke. My father started to sing "Auld Lang Syne" as everybody followed suit. To my credit, I sung the song despite my awful singing voice. Again, I had my nth glass of alcohol, scotch to be exact, as I finally was able to enjoy the simple gathering that my family arranged as we celebrate the dawn of the new year. Maybe because I was drunk...

But then again, I woke up the next day on my room with no knowledge of what happened after that. So yeah, it was a boring evening.

Currently watching : 2001 - A Space Odyssey Release date: 12 June, 2001

2:02 AM - 14 Comments - 9 Kudos - Add Comment

Possibly Maybe
Category: Life

Christmas is closing in, and the lingering boredom that has been nagging me the past couple of weeks has finally taken its course. I have been led yet again to realize that life is one big paradox. The last time I thought about a painful boredom was when I read the book Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre. The book is quite boring... literally. The book talks about how boring life could be when you suddenly found out that there happens to be no reason for living. However, I have been led that in order to make meaning to our lives, we have to act upon it.

By acting upon it, people deal with their realities in different ways, and on top of the list are reason and faith. Both provide a raison d'être, but both have different approaches. Reason may govern other people's way of life through proofs and evidences, while faith relies on beliefs that mere words cannot explain. Oddly, in given circumstances, both reason and faith cannot work on their own. Sometimes, we have to rely on both of them at the same time in order to make more sense of our lives.

The same thing could easily be applied to a romantic relationship. Love is most deceptive in which one has to be both reasonable and sensible at the same time. Regardless of its difficulty, a mastery of handling both responsibilities could very well be the key to an enduring companionship, something which I am may not be good at.

Personally, I'm more of a reasonable woman than a sensible one, surprising as it may seem. I don't let my emotions get the best of me in most cases, and I always try and get a greater perspective of things before I make a well-informed and educated decision. However, I'm not a totally reasonable person. I can be a bit emotional on occasions. I never have been a person who has lots of friends due to my tendency of keeping an emotional distance from everyone. That's because I primarily follow my gut feeling in judging a person. To my defense, I don't consider this as a weakness, but more of a shortcoming, which has a different connotation altogether. No one is perfect, so this probably rings true to me as well.

However, these reasons alone don't necessarily make me a sensible one either. Instead, I've always seen myself as a person in the middle. In other words, I'm a "maybe" person, one of the saddest, most hapless people in the face of the world.

Do you like me? Maybe? Do you want fries with that, ma'am? Maybe? You're cute. Check out my profile. Maybe.

Saying "maybe" to what seems to be an invitation to a blossoming romance, or a friendship for that matter, shows that there is a problem to that person. From what I know, "maybe" means indecision, which is caused by a lack of understanding to a particular situation. "Maybe" is also used to cover up a person's real answer. However, I'm not really sure what "maybe" means anymore.

Judging from my dead social life, along with my frustrations of having a writing career, "maybe" has become my mantra. Not sure. Always undecided. Not sticking to one side, but always standing to top of the fence. So much for reason and faith.

This would likely be a long holiday for me, although this isn't the first time it happened. It's a good thing that I still have my Myspace and Fling.com account on the 'Net, which should fill my need for companionship. Happy holidays everybody! Or maybe not...

Currently reading : Nausea (New Directions Paperbook) By Jean-Paul Sartre Release date: June, 1969

1:33 PM - 12 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

In Limbo

My father called me last night from Shenandoah in Iowa, where my whole family currently resides. It was quite a long time since he last called, so we had a lengthy conversation about how things are going with our respective lives. Despite his ripe age of 68, he's doing quite well. In fact, he told me that he currently enrolled himself in an aerobics program at their local gym, "to keep the old, rusty blood flowing," he said. God, and you expect people like him to fold like a fetus in bed and pass away...

But what struck me as odd was when he asked me an unusual question. "Is your life turning out the way you planned it to be five years ago?" He asked in a calm, cadent-like manner, somehow sounding as if he's satisfied with his life, and is ready to accept his demise at any moment.

I've heard of how people set plans and goals to accomplish within the next five years, and for some reason, I made mine. One of the many goals I have is to become an established writer, nay, an editor, for a prestigious publication. A writing career appealed to me because I never really had a genuine love for wisdom. Nevertheless, I think that the time I spent burning my brain writing position papers and expounding on philosophical ideas has trained me well enough to write coherent, albeit robotic and banal articles.

As it turned out, looking for a writing job isn't as easy as I thought it would be. Not that I was underestimating the media and the journalism profession, but it made me realize how brutal the real world can be. I applied for various writing jobs here at Iowa, but I wasn't accepted to any of them. It's either I didn't have enough experience as a journalist, or that I simply wasn't cut out to be a writer, period.

Even if it pained me to hear this, I still had to do something to keep me going. Months of unemployment has finally forced me to apply for any available job out there. Apparently, desperation tends to bring out the damned-if-I-do-damed-if-I-don't attitude in each and every one of us.

After some time, I landed as a marketing associate for Bank Iowa, and after four years, I got promoted as a financial analyst. It's not really difficult as everybody thought it would be. It'll be easy once you get to know how to deal with people, aside from having patience, hard work, and determination to go along with it.

However, looking back from where I've come from, I can't exactly piece together the events that led me to what I've become. Although I did move towards a particular goal; and that is to excel on the job that I was given, I don't think I made tremendous strides with my life (as far as my personal growth is concerned).

What I'm left with are fragments of reality, accomplishments that I've accumulated throughout the years, but are not according to my goals and aspirations. Suffice to say, being a financial analyst for a prestigious bank and leading a marginally boring lifestyle isn't what I indicated in my five year plan. This epiphany has left me feeling that I'm merely going through the notions of my non-existence. Even my registration at Fling.com seemed to have lost its luster after my first few weeks of excitement at that site. Everything now just feels useless.

After my father dropped the call, I sat on the couch of my apartment, nonchalantly staring outside the shiny night from where the stars shimmer because its image from afar passes through the atmosphere, hazing its appearing. But why do they shimmer? No apparent reason.

Currently listening : Kid A By Radiohead Release date: 03 October, 2000

8:38 AM - 17 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Faux-Perversity
Current mood: uncomfortable

Perversity has become an integral part of society, for without it, the life we have come to know would not be the same. Perversity has helped define moral structures, contributing to what one ought and ought not to do. More importantly, it has helped expand man's horizon of the world in ways unimaginable. Figures like Charles Baudelaire, Marquis de Sade, and Georges Bataille were first of the few to discuss eroticism and pornography in public. At the same time, their perversity has spawned Philosophy in the Bedroom, Les Fleurs du mal, and Story of the Eye, challenging literary works that will stand the test of time. Suffice to say, there is a fine line between brilliance and stupidity, and they valiantly cross it in the most wayward fashion.

However, just as any de Sade, Baudelaire, or Bataille out there, there is also a Ted Bundy, a Jeffrey Dahmer, and an Ed Gein, all of whom seem to contribute their individuality much in the same sense as those literary laureates did, but in ways not worthy of being called humanly acts. These serial killers showed their penchant for physical and carnal debauchery, but they did it in a wretched fashion bereft of the purpose driving the human will. Their actions were caused by their deteriorated mental state, but it is not an excuse to justify their crookedness.

But then, just as much as they are misguided individuals like Bundy, Dahmer, and Gein, there comes another wave of people on the verge of committing heinous acts themselves. The only difference is that they hide their insolence behind the Internet. I'm talking about the idiots from Fling.com.

Granted that the site has provide me with pleasant men to talk to, there are others who simply don't get it. These strangers would leave messages in my inbox saying that they want to "beng [my] bitchy-fine ass," and to "stic [their] cok nside [my] pussy." Now, I don't know if the typos were caused by their raging hormones, or because they're typing with just one hand while they're using the other to whack off their genitals, but bottom line is, these people are L-A-M-E.

The messages were probably caused by the sexy profile that I made, in which I modified my pictures, in the purpose of partially hiding my identity. Everything else on my profile is authentic, from my personal information, to my Fling preferences. As for the pictures, my limited knowledge with Photoshop enabled me to seamlessly paste my face on some random picture with a hot, smoking body in it. One picture was taken from an upskirt view, and the bikini-clad woman from the picture was kneeling with her legs spread. So it should actually come to no surprise that men from Fling.com would lust over my profile.

However, the most disturbing part is that, not only are some of the men sending distasteful messages, but these men are old enough to be my grandfather! One of the profiles who keeps bugging me with irreverent messages is 70-years old! I mean, are you fucking serious?!? God, if only I were part of NBC Dateline's To Catch A Predator, I'd have these people arrested!

On the upside, however, Fling.com is an interesting online dating site. It's far from perfect, I'll give you that, but it's definitely entertaining. So far, I've only engaged in e-mails and live chats with some of the people there, and I don't have a webcam yet, so it somehow dampened my experience overall. I'm seriously contemplating on buying one though, proof showing that I'm here to stay at Fling.com.

As for those perverted asswipes messaging me, they're no better than the aforementioned serial killers. In fact, they're actually worse. Get a life, losers...

Currently watching : Match Point Release date: 25 April, 2006

2:13 AM - 14 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Current mood: dorky

I love movies. Well, not as much as movie critics would make a living out of it, but I appreciate movies enough to have it affect my worldview. I used to watch at least a new movie everyday, whether if it means borrowing from my officemates, or pilfering from my sister's collection. Movies like Schindler's List, Donnie Darko or City of God serve as snapshots of different realities taking place, and watching these moments unfold on-screen gave a profound effect on my life, which sometimes leads me to do things I have never done before. And after last night, Happiness was profound enough to make me realize that entering my profile on Fling.com was worth the risk.

To start off, I'll just copy and paste the plot outline of the movie here, as shown on The Internet Movie Database:

"When a young woman (Jane Adams) rejects her current overweight suitor (Jon Lovitz) in a restaurant, he unexpectedly places a curse on her. The film then moves on to her sisters. One (Cynthia Stevenson) is a happily married woman with a psychiatrist husband (Dylan Baker) and three kids. Unfortunately the husband develops an unnatural fascination for his 11 year old son's male classmates, fantasizes about mass killing in a park, and masturbates to teen magazines*. One of his patients (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has an unrequited fascination for the third sister (Lara Flynn Boyle). Meanwhile the apparently stable 40 year marriage of the sister's parents (Ben Gazzara, Louise Lasser) suddenly unravels when he decides he has had enough and wants to live a hermit's life in Florida. Obviously, the whole movie is slightly warped in its viewpoint and certainly presents abnormal relationships among all of its parties."

*the bold text was my doing. Personally, that is the best storyline in the movie.

Anyway, the impression I got from the movie was about the characters finding their own happiness amidst their seeming eccentricities. Sure, the movie presented extreme cases of abnormalities and deficiencies which the characters possessed, but it was finding what gave meaning to each of their lives that made the movie even more intriguing. Whether it be seducing adolescent boys into bed, or making prank phone calls and masturbating over their voices, regardless of how sick these acts could be, it nevertheless presented happiness as a fuel to a person's desire to life.

I have been thinking of riding the online dating bandwagon for quite some time now, since my romantic life has been on a dry spell for years already. However, I did my research about these sites, and my findings were not convincing. Having my account for other people to see can prove risky because some of these people might be a sexual deviant of some sort, or worse, a stalker. Plus, the chances of encountering fake profiles on these sites are pretty high, since the Internet has been a haven for anonymous identities. These issues influenced my decision of refusing to put myself on the line before.

But the movie has got me thinking, if I don't put myself on the line this time, when would I? If happiness would mean that I would have to put my damn profile on some dating site, even if it means compromising the things I hold dear, then so be it. Fine, I have to admit that I feel like pulling a trigger on my head when I pronounce to the whole world of my induction to the hall of desperate-woman-wanting-to-have-fun, but sometimes, you just have to take things in your own hands.

By treading my own path, I would have done Friedrich Nietzsche good.

Currently watching : Happiness Release date: 27 April, 1999

1:09 AM - 13 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

Choices
Current mood: confused

I'll just start off by telling an anecdote, because usually, when any form of conceived writing starts with a story, it grabs the readers' interests which allows them to read the whole damn thing. I did that on one of my written reports during college, and my professors gave me a commendable grade. The paper dealt with the topic of finding happiness in a postmodern world, where everything is disjointed and all effects don't necessarily thrive from having a cause.

Anyway, I started off my paper by telling what my mother told me one morning. She passed through the breakfast table and stopped after seeing me read the headlines of the newspaper, like I always do, while I was eating bacon and eggs. And like always, she gave me her classic dead stare. It sparked a conversation that went on like this...

Mom: Why the hell are you reading that?

Me: Reading what? The newspaper?

Mom: No, the front page...the headlines. Why are you reading it?

Me: Uh...because I want to? And because I want to know something about current affairs?

Mom: (sighs)

Me: Mom, I've been reading newspaper a long time now. It's not like I just started read---

Mom: Why don't you just read the comics section, hon?

Me: (really confused) What?

Mom: Why don't you just read the comics section of the newspaper?

Me: Why are you telling me this?

Mom: Hon, don't you noticed how depressing the headlines are? With all the stuff the media has been feeding us, why don't you do yourself a favor and read the comics section?

Me: Mom, what about the headlines? The stuff that are happening around us? Don't you think it's just as important?

Mom: Well, everybody's gonna be talking about it anyway, you actually don't have to read it. And besides, the morning isn't complete without having read Dilbert.(scours for the comics page from the newspaper)

After our conversation, I decided to take up philosophy in college. Don't ask me why.

Before, when we were little kids who didn't have a damn clue in the world, everything was so simple. We did not suffer the result of doing bad things simply because we do not know how good is done in the first place. However, as we grew older, we underwent episodes in life that shaped us to what we are right now. We got to learn from our experiences and gain valuable knowledge from them.

But at the same time, things became more complicated. It wasn't simply on whether we become someone in this world, but how we become one. Choices became harder to make because aside from choosing between black and white, the line between them is suddenly blurred by a gray area that's neither of the two. What we thought was beautiful and sacred before has suddenly turned grotesque and putrid once we got to understand the things around us.

Life has a way of throwing us off course. I don't think a person truly wants to become an exhibitionist, but because of his genes and character psychology, he turned out to be such. A serial killer doesn't necessarily become one as well. Same with being a philosopher, unless he's really fucking weird. It simply shows that we think that we're sure of who we are, when we simply are not.

After graduation, I took a job that has nothing to do with philosophy. It felt strange that after spending those four years busting my ass off, reading primary texts of Aristotle, Kant, and Heidegger, and memorizing every conceivable concept that these philosophers have thought off, I would spend my post-graduate life as a financial analyst. Now, I'm not complaining with what I've turned out to be, but back then, I did not even entertain the thought of reviewing deals and observing financial trends of the market. Like what John Malkovich's character on Dangerous Liaisons said, "It was beyond my control."

But at the end of the day, we have to make a stand for what we really want to become. Life doesn't simply end on where we are right now. We simply do not settle for what's there because we are human beings designed to make choices and to walk our own path. We keep on moving, striving for better things in life. We are constantly searching for something greater, something the world has not possibly even mustered yet.

However, for us to take on a greater path, we must choose a side. Granted that we have understood the life that we're living right now, it is ultimately up to us whether we choose to see the world through comic strips, happy and jovial, or we could see the worlds like how the headlines are read, blunt and harsh. Only by choosing a perspective on how to see life can we start living it.

So, which side are you on?

1:49 AM - 10 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment