Ambient Noise for Public House, or Early Steps to a DJ Career

This is the CD I cut for Public House, the bar that Natalia and I (and other miscellaneous friends) frequent. Credit for Virgin State of Mind, Belong and Days Go By, as well as over-all criticism in the process of putting the songs together, goes to Natalia.

Everything's Just Wonderful
Artist: Lily Allen
Album: Alright, Still

Starlight
Artist: Muse
Album: Black Holes & Revelations

Virgin State of Mind
Artist: K's Choice
Album: Music from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Zephyr Song
Artist: Red Hot Chili Pepers
Album: By The Way

Drive
Artist: Incubus
Album: Make Yourself

Days Go By (Acoustic)
Artist: Dirty Vegas
Album: The Best Acoustic Album in the World (I shit you not)

Dani California
Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Album: Stadium Arcadium

There is a Light that Never Goes Out
Artist: Morissey
Album: Redondo Beach

Pursuit of Happiness
Artist: Nuno
Album: Schizophonic

Belong
Artist: R.E.M.
Album: Out of Time

Eleanor Put Your Boots On
Artist: Franz Ferdinand
Album: You Could Have it So Much Better

Yellow Sun
Artist: The Raconteurs
Album: Broken Boy Soldiers

Bohemian Like You
Artist: Dandy Warhols
Album: Radio Sunnydale

Shiver (Acoustic)
Artist: Coldplay
Album: Trouble (B sides)

Angel
Artist: Dave Matthews Band
Album: Everyday

My Hero
Artist: Foo Fighters
Album: Skin and Bones


CD Cover Artwork by sdri 10 March 2007

today's epiphany: i hate to write

i do. i hate it. i have fragmented thoughts. i lack cohesion and depth. increasingly, as an occupation hazard, my vocabulary is getting limited.

but i digress.

the point of this post was supposed to be that i got in. what i auditioned for, i mean. i'm in.

it isn't quite clear what the parameters of this production will be, but i am under the impression that we have been given a number of books to go through, and that the monologues we'll perform will be based on these texts.

- Soseki Natsume's "Ten Nights of Dream, Hearing Things, The Heredity of Taste"
- Lorenzino de' Medici's "Apology for a Murder"
- Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception"
- Barbara Comyns' "The Vet's Daughter"
- Fernando Pessoa's "The Book of Disquiet"
- Junichiro Tanizaki's "Diary of a Mad Old Man"

none of which i've read.

plus, today, i got an email from the Kasarinlan people, asking me for my article on East Timor. Aaaaagh!!!!!!

i'm feeling mentally constipated today.
*listening to franz ferdinand*

i wish i had a voice that carried texture and emotion. that came from the depths of my chest instead of the top of my head.

i wish i were a different kind of person.

i wish i had more mental discipline.

i wish that my ambitions for myself were matched by my capacity for action.

inertia is defined as the tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged. a body at rest will stay at rest. a body in motion will continue in a straight line unless a force is exerted on it, to change its direction.

that's what i am. inert. there are voices in my head, screaming at me to act, but i'm oddly silent.

act on what?

the extent of change in direction is directly proportionate to the force impelling the change.

Random thoughts in the middle of today

The Red Army Faction & Cameron Diaz. Coming across this article on the release of Brigitte Mohnhaupt from 24 years of imprisonment for terrorist activities of the Red Army Faction in the 70s, it reminded me of this film called "The Invisible Circus". I bought a copy of the DVD for 6 Euros in Paris. It stars one of my all-time favorite actors, Christopher Eccleston (who incidentally has been introduced in Heroes Season 2; Heroes creator Tim Kring, in another bit of random trivia, was a writer for another of my all-time favorites, the short-lived Misfits of Science--end parenthetical thought). It's about this young girl (Cameron Diaz), who travels through Europe, hooks up with Christopher Eccleston, joins the Red Army Faction, you get the picture...

The Acting Bug! It’s 8:45 in the morning on a Sunday. The phone rings and Gabby wakes up, plaintively yelling, “Mama! Phone! Mama! Phone”. Gabby helpfully hands me my phone and I pick up.

“Hello, this is so and so from Little Red Book or something like that.” And then he goes on relentlessly about how I’m being invited to audition at the Substation for this monologue project that they’re doing.

OK, reality check. A, yes, I submitted a piece just before 11pm the night before; on my way out to meet Natalia and Ira for a drink. B, it was 8:45AM.

Unfortunately, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to be much nicer and less bitchy to all and sundry. So instead of yelling at the motherfrakker to go frak himself and his gay boyfriend, I very nicely suggested that perhaps 8:45AM on a Sunday wasn’t the best time to go around calling people with information that could be emailed or, better yet, left ‘til Monday.

So. Whoooooo! I’m auditioning! I honestly don’t know what the performance is all about and plus, due to the exigency of editing my story into a 500-word monologue, I’ve boxed myself into the role of “I was curious about girl-on-girl action”. I’m not actually sure I can pull this off on stage.

More importantly, what do I wear??????

I see with the unblinking eyes of my mind

I see with the unblinking eyes of my mind. Paralyzed and mute.

Car accident. Life moves on outside my hospital window, without me, I guess.

Raphael framed by a dense carpet of stars, on a beach. Stella parading around the room naked, laughing. The bright orange point of Teddy’s cigarette describing the arcs of his emphatic ranting. The darkness. The inhuman scream of tires on asphalt.

The nurse is padding around the room, checking on this and that; my only evidence of this is the swish of fabric on fabric and the occasional metallic resonance of the equipment. She seems to be talking to me—or to herself? My attention has wandered.

I’m back in my apartment with Stella, a year ago.

She likes it best when I fuck her like a man. A subtle irony I never comment on.


Click here to read the full text.

Tampontification

So until today, I'd never learned to use a tampon. First of all, I hardly ever get a period (which makes Gabby's birth even more mysterious). When I was in high school, it started at three-month intervals. In college, it became semestral. When I started working, it turned into an annual event. Finally, when I started working where I work now, I had one period in my first month here. Only. It's all stress-related, so you can imagine what my working life has been like in the past four years.

Then, all of a sudden, in Bohol, THE DAY BEFORE I WAS SUPPOSED TO START MY WEEK-LONG DIVE TRIP, I got my period. And since I was too freaked out to dive with my period for the first time, I didn't dare use a tampon. It was a horrible horrible experience. Aaargh. Blech.

Now, today, I got my period again. I'm like, wow, two months in a row. I discovered it in the bathroom, as Anjeli and I were about to leave for lunch.

ME: (in the bathroom stall) Anjeli! I got my period!
ANJELI: Yay?
ME: SOS! Can you please check to see if anyone has a pad or tampon?
(pause... she returns with both)
ME: OK, the pad is way too big for my underwear. I'll have to use the tampon, and I've never used one before.

And then the most touching moment between two female friends unfolds.

ME: Will you... help me?
ANJELI: Are you twelve?

So, anyway, I'm behind the stall door again and she's coaching me from the sink.

ME: Do I sit down or stand up?
ANJELI: Well, you could do either but it's better if you stand up.
ME: Will it fall out?
ANJELI: Just make sure that the string is still out, you idiot.

So. That was the high point of my day.

If men had periods, they'd brag about the size of their tampons.

Conversations with the Brain Dead

After a botched attempt at coming up with "Comeback Fantasies" as a sequel to my previous post (the only blog-worthy one was mine: looking at the crater where our building used to be), I've decided to faithfully transcribe stupid conversations that I've been a party to.


Umbad: Of course my life improved after I stopped sleeping with my teddy bear
***
Umbad: I hate pingpong. I can't stand balls being flung at my face.
***
Einosk: (joking about how the word "unagi" sets Umbad to laughing uncontrollably)
Umbad: Hey, if you keep making that joke, I’m really going to get de-sanitised about this whole thing
***
Then they start talking about Star Trek
Umbad: Personally, I’m really looking forward to the day when I can say, “Scottie beam me up..”
***
Umbad: It was a highly sophisticated joke, I'm just sorry that you don't get my sense of humor.
***
Umbad: Of course dogs are color-blind. It's not like they're going to be painters.
***
Einosk: Why are poverty statistics like 'half of humanity lives on 2 US dollars a day?'. Why don't they say 400,000 rupiah? Then it sounds like a lot......... I'm not sure if I got the conversion right.
***
Einosk: If the vet could treat him (office hamster) or perform surgery, we'd do it. But unfortunately, hamster science has not evolved to that stage.
***
Raymond: (For bulimics at the end of dinner) Let's just pay up, and throw up.


And that's intellectual exchange.

Quitting Fantasies

Me: Declaring to BF that I'm leaving and him not being able to change my mind.

Chocolatini: Being the ONLY one in charge of a major, politically important conference and quit a couple of days before the event.

Einosk: Going up to the Big Boss, handing him a pile of cash (a month's salary), and saying, "Here's your money. Go to hell."

Umbad: Just not showing up at the office one day.

Raymond: Leaving his resignation letter on the boss's desk the day he leaves for the summer and people only noticing a couple of months later (meanwhile, his salary keeps coming into his bank account).

Supernonsense: Getting into a fight and then getting called into BF's office. BF tells her, "you can't do that if you want to work here" and she's like "well i don't WANT to work here" (she then takes resignation letter out of cleavage and flings it at him)

Muse

OK, this post can't wait.
1. I went to the Muse concert last night. Matt Bellamy is so fucking talented. Voice and guitar aside, what impressed me the most was him on the keyboards. Technical proficiency and amazing energy.
2. I was in the crush of the crowd way up front. Couldn't smoke, couldn't drink. So I decided to leave for a while and get a drink. The girl at the counter was a sweetheart. I ordered a double whiskey coke and she gave me one without charging me extra. Needless to say, it packed a wallop. So I went up to the building in the back, sat on the steps and chilled out for a while. It was kinda fun, dancing and yelling all by myself.
3. The people I was with started appearing (apparently, I was on the way to where the bathrooms were). I belatedly realized that the concert was over. And I couldn't believe it. As we walked out, I baffled the security with my intellect and Vulcan logic:
Me: Is the concert really over?
Them: Yes.
Me: Is it over enough for me to get on the stage?
Them: (Puzzled, but programmed) Uh, yes.
I thereafter ran up to the stage and got one foot on before they scrambled over to stop me.
4. Went to Public House after, to meet up with Natalia and gang, Muse crowd in tow. Had one chocolatini. Cheated at pool and lost two games. But, hey, I couldn't shoot straight by then.
5. The Muse crowd leaves. I get these messages on my phone that Muse is at Loof, where they are. I'm like, no way. Aswhin's like, yes, for real. OK, whatever, Public House was almost closing by then anyway. So I arrive at Loof.

Now this is the point of my indignation and this whole post.

1. So the band was at the bar. I didn't want to be all groupie-like and made a point of not talking to Matt Bellamy. So I chit chatted with the other guy, who I THOUGHT was the drummer. This morning, to my utter mortification, I found out that he was just a random keyboardist. I sidled up to a ROADIE. Who, by the way, was perfectly nice and had no pretensions. For a ROADIE.
2. After that whole episode, I came back to our table and found myself talking to some OZ dude named Elias or Elliot. WHO TOLD ME THAT HE WAS A ROADIE FOR MUSE. He was all blah blah blah about where they're going to next and I was all "don't you secretly wish you were working for Radiohead?". I may have even introduced him to someone else (but it was probably this psycho groupie from Taiwan, so that doesn't really count). I just found out this morning that he's a fucking banker for BNP Paribas. Sonofabitch.


Not that I was impressed at all with his whole "I work with Muse" schtick

to junior on his 35th birthday

there is a long and unending string
that ties my heart to yours;
yank it, and i’ll falter.

you can leave it slack,
you can reel it in,
keep it in your pocket and carry it around.

not just one tie but many;
not binding but a bond;
not an always straight line;
theseus in the labyrinth—
you at its aperture, me at its center.


Manila. 5th January 2007.

Resolutions, Typically

In no particular order:

1. Write more
2. Love better
3. Be less evil
4. Smoke less and be healthier
5. Listen to more pinoy music and read the Philippine Daily Inquirer daily
6. Get shit together again, work-wise
7. Manage finances
8. Get involved in a performance art
9. Resume French lessons
10. Work toward grad school again


what was that about a leopard and its spots?