Panic!

I misplaced my portfolio!

And it has my birth certificate in it!

And my NBI clearance!

And my school notes!

And my PASSPORT!

I can't find it! And it's not at Paola's house. Oh my God. - End of world -

1:14 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Nerd: New book list
Current mood: contemplative

Legend:

* Badly needed academic reading
** Want to read so bad, but not for academic purposes - more for the purpose of discourse and maybe leisure

Simone de Beauvoir
-The Second Sex **

Judith Butler
- Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity **

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
- Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything **

Betty Friedan
- The feminine mystique **

Thomas L. Friedman
- The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century **

Michel Foucault
- Discipline & Punish: The birth of the prison **
- The history of sexuality: An Introduction *
- The History of Sexuality: The use of pleasure **
- Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason **
- Archaeology of Knowledge *

Germaine Greer
- The Female Eunuch *

Tim Harford
- The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor--and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car! **

Stephen Hawking
- A brief history of time **
- A briefer history of time **
- The universe in a nutshell **
- The theory of Everything: The origin of fate and the Universe **

Freidrich Nietzsche
- Thus Spake Zarathustra **

George Ritzer
- The McDonaldization of Society *

***

Now I know why "Old habits die hard like living." How come I never thought of it that way before?

Currently listening : I Megaphone By Imogen Heap Release date: 14 November, 2006

11:26 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The crickets that keep me sleepless and the room of white elephants - suffocating

I'm so spent. And it was quite a stunt I pulled. Yesterday, this man tried to yank out my guts to examine it by using a procedure he appropriately calls a "Background check". We've been neighbors for years. But have only known that by a fraction of a day.

Last night, this man was probably grinning inwardly while he took delight in picking up my details which later resulted to my being called a "Foucauldian" - as if he isn't quite himself. He likes phenomenology too. I told him it was boring. But I was halfway at changing my mind about that when I saw his face as he was dropping me off home this morning. Phenomelogists: what is up with you people? Human phenomenologists are either sadists or altruists. And the worse thing people like you can do to people like me is to turn me in to a walking catharsis. And have the gall to call me dangerous at that.

I am dangerous.

***

When you're tossling around your bed, trying to ward off the uneasy crickets in your head, the more they seem to get closer. When you finally face the crickets, that is when they die and you wake up from the restless dream. It does not mean you will end the dream entirely. But for now the crickets are gone.

Our mind teases and teases and teases until we have surrendered our inhibitions to the mystical. And the secrets we build around our lives will keep pressing for revelation, intuitively. It is our human weakness after all. But you ought to be weak before you regain your strength.

Also, our creativity is our own sadist. That which makes us happy, we do not know. And since we know what's miserable so well, we lock our souls within misery, looking for happiness.

We wonder if freedom from pain is freedom at all when we know not freedom without pain. Therefore to be free and painless is to die, in which case, I'd like to live. I will live for the person whose pain will increase if I choose to decrease mine decidedly.

Sherad, I'm blaming you for this. But I guess I also have to thank you for.

***

I warned you.

Currently listening : Blue By Joni Mitchell Release date: 25 October, 1990

1:58 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Heartless
Current mood: cold

Yeah, so I'm glad I spent most of Valentine's day with friends and a portion of it with an infamous ex whose effect on me was surprisingly casual. Surprisingly.

I don't feel anything anymore. Why is that?

Currently listening : Super Extra Gravity By The Cardigans Release date: 27 October, 2005

12:18 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Weird, tired, all over the place.

Yesterday.

Thankfully the NBI people were nice to me especially when they looked down on my form and saw Occupation:  Student / Disc Jockey.  Lined up as early as 8:30 AM to get my NBI clearance only to find out that the cashier wouldn't be open until 10.   So I dropped by the station to find that Kent wasn't there (and later I learn that he was drunk the night before hence rendering him unable to go on air that morning).  And I ended up catching breakfast at Mickey Dee's.  I have betrayed myself yet again.

Went to school for Prof. Ilagan's class, which I can't miss for the world...(because the last class I missed was on Gender politics and sexuality.  FUCK!)  I headed back to the NBI center after class to line up, then about an hour later, I've finally paid for my clearance...which I couldn't get there and then.  Let's just put that this part of the day was spent going back and forth and walking around. And ending up in McD's again.

Took my Economics class which had a 10-point bonus quetion about Lord of the Rings.  Cheese.  Went to the station to do my 4-hour shift which suddenly changes when my boss calls up and tells me to put on extra hours to wait for David Pomeranz's kids to call me up so I could record their voice to greet the David P. on his birthday - that's tonight, for his concert in Edsa Shang hotel, Manila. Snap. Luckily Kent dropped by to bother me so that kept me awake for a while.

But around quarter to 12, with no phone calls at bay, I called up my boss and begged him that I had papers to do and managed to convince him how it's humanly impossible for me to stay awake for that if I wait any longer.  Give it 10 minutes, he said.  And I did; no expected phone call thus far.  Closed the station only to find out this morning, when I dropped by the station again in time for Kent's shift, Niki, David's kid called up around 12.  Shit.

I ditched David Pomeranz's kid last night.

NBI Clearance update:  The nice people over at the center told me to come 2 weeks later.  WHAT?  The only reason that ever happens is if there are people in other parts in the Philippines with the same name as I do and have pending cases with the NBI.  Kinda makes me think of the other Kim Castillo(s) out there.  Hello, how are you?  Can we be friends?  What do you do?

***

Here I go again.  Time for some calendar-ing.

February

9  - (Friday)    10-11 AM NBI; 1:30-2:30 PM School; 6-10 PM Work; 10-12 PM Meeting
10 - (Saturday)  10-12 AM Tutoring; 2-6 PM Creative Commons Seminar; 6-10 PM Work
11 - (Sunday)    2-6 PM Work
12 - (Monday)    8:30 AM-2:30 PM School; 3:40-6 PM Debate practice; 6-10 PM Work; 10-onwards with Melissa
13 - (Tuesday)   7:40-4:10 PM School, excluding 12:30-4 PM break; 12:30-4 PM Finalize Feb. 14 program; 6-10 PM Work; 10-onwards with Melissa
14 - (Wednesday) 8:30 AM-2:30 PM School; 3:40-6 PM Debate practice; 6-10 PM Work; 10-onwards with Melissa (Tsina! You're so fucking special daw.)
15 - (Thursday)  7:40-4:10 PM School; 1-4 PM Tutoring; 6-10 PM Work
16 - (Friday)    8:30 AM-2:30 PM School; 4-6 PM Foucalt lecture on History of Sexuality; 6-10 PM work; 10-onwards Gig @ Paseo.
17 - (Saturday)  9:30 AM-6 PM Foucalt lecture on History of Sexuality day 2; 6-10 PM work; 10-11 PM Davao blogger's party; 11-12 Gig @ Paseo; 12-onwards Jen's going away party.

Unsure dates:

25-26 15th Mindanao Parliamentary Debate Champs in Surigao.

Sabay sabaw nating sabihin:  Ang babaing walang pahinga.

Currently listening : ...Is a Real Boy By Say Anything Release date: 13 July, 2004

5:46 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Where is all this sadness coming from?

"Where is all your sadness coming from?" Erika pressed for it, and I think of a tissue being ripped away from a paper weight in my head.

"I honestly don't know," I suddenly felt dead weight. Erika has this intuitive way of gripping my shoulder at that instant.  I'm more honest about the unhappy things than I am with the opposite.


***

From Billy Corgan's Blog..

The Smashing Pumpkins
6th album
'Zeitgeist'
07.07.07

Fucking excited.  Honestly.

Currently listening : So Jealous By Tegan and Sara Release date: 14 September, 2004

3:40 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Monologue
Current mood: cold

Damn, it slipped.  I completely forgot how to start this entry, but I know that what I was supposed to say was profound if not obnoxiously pseudo-intellectual.   I don't know.  At least these days I'm not talking using someone else's voice - an ability I'm occassionally tempted to perform.  And speaking of which, it took me quite a while to keep myself in check. Call me a schizo, but when I'm around people who influence me a great deal, my mind starts to mimic their speech patterns which later do some talking inside my head. This may seem hard to believe for some people especially to those who tell me how calm and harmless I seem to be.  I am noisy inside my head and have an ample amount of neurosis at bay, which can mean also that if I do snap, it could turn me in to a contender for a mental institution, although I haven't quite stepped beyond toying with the idea.  Anyway, these voices...they speak for me sometimes whenever I don't feel like talking.  I know I speak someone else's voice when I forget that I'm talking or I don't believe in what I say.  I speak as someone else especially when I lie.  Or maybe this is what I tell myself to try to imagine myself guilt-free.  Or I'm a fucking schizo.  Hahaha.  Anyway, I'm diving into a quicksand here, help me out.

(Warning: Cover your nose to stop yourself from bleeding.) And I'd like to share the metaphysical assertion behind accidental forms. What of the blueness of blue and the hairness of hair?  There are things that are undisputedly a priori.  And Shakespeare comes to mind suddenly, that indeed some things (e.g. love)  are not itself which alters when it alteration finds.  It's scary that the world is immovable that way and that we are helplessly trapped by what is a priori and men are hapless beings that move about to redesign within design.  Recreation of creation, is comforting but the truth is, we have no absolute control over creation except over the creation that we are.   Which is to say the most control we have is the control we have over the indissolubility of ourselves from the fact that we too are creations with no a priori, except what asserts itself to be in biological terms.  Even that is a questionable a priori since existence is too complex a miracle as it is to be reduced as a product of mere biology. 

Existence is the only thing in the world that is not accidental.

11:25 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

I'll let you read just this one entry from my written diary

Dear you,

My name is Kim and this -- this thing you're reading right now -- is actually my diary. Which means that all codes of decency demand that you close this notebook right this instant! Unless of course you're in a communist country where things like privacy are almost public property. I bet that's not even the case for the sole respect that I've never fancied going in to a communist country or becoming one, while we're on that issue.

But since you're still reading, therefore confirming your lack or complete non-possession of moral fiber, I regretfully (unknowingly and begrudgingly) share to you that I lie and I am terribly good at it. It could be that I'm also lying now and the secret I just told you was no secret at all. Or if I'm strictly bound by my own traditional codes, like telling the truth in a diary, I can be commended for foregoing that "detestable" ability just this once.

What then is a secret if you can lie about it? I suppose a lie can have its little secret as well. Can this not suggest that a secret covered by a lie is the essence of a secret -- that which is not supposed to be told for one reason or another? Moreover, what is so bad about lying if its purpose is to stop the revelation of a truth that shouldn't be revealed for a reasonable cause?

I'm writing this to convince myself that lying is not essentially bad. It can be said, however, that a truth is more valuable than a lie, which is why when people find out something was a lie upon learning the truth, they feel "cheated". How can someone keep something as remarkable as the truth and give you a second-rate lie instead? It is this unfair juxtaposition of a lie and a truth that renders a lie bad. It's like blaming a lid for not keeping in the bubbling froth from coming out of a boiling pot. In fact, it's not really the lid's fault but the fault of the one who set up the fire coming out of the stove. In other words, you can't say a lie is bad next to the truth. And you can't say a lie is bad per se either. Going back to the metaphor of the overflowing pot, you really can't say that the lid is bad. The lie is not bad but perhaps the liar is. Because then you'd have to ask the motive of the liar for lying in the first place. Does the lie have a good intention? Does the liar lie to protect the essentially good yet vulnerable truth, or does the liar lie selfishly?

I lied. That wasn't my secret. My true secret is that I am a liar, not merely a teller of lies. And not that I'm terribly good at lying but that I am a liar who happens to be terribly good at it. After all, everyone lies but not everyone's a liar.

5:45 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

I love like Sabina

I love like Sabina. Reference to Milan Kundera.

It's like I want something so bad, but I only have substitutes. So I exhaust the substitutes.

But since I don't have what I want, I always feel like...I'm endlessly chasing.  Something that's not there for me to begin with.

2:27 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Aha!

At biglang sinabi nila na pumayat ako!  And drastically too, they say.  This isn't supposed to emphasize how utterly obssessed I am with weight loss but the thing is I don't really do it on purpose.  I think it's partly due to the fact that I do forget to eat on the right time and I do have minimal appetite due to one thing bothering me or another... In any case, the point is that I am losing weight at a drastic pace and I didn't really notice it until someone called my attention.

So I guess.  That's that.  So much for being anorexic.

Currently reading : Memories of My Melancholy Whores By Gabriel Garcia Marquez Release date: 25 October, 2005

7:11 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment