does the london bridge in paris when the sun goes down? and the dish ran away with the spoon? hmmm, curiouser and curiouser

haiku

I feel a stirring
a stream of uod swarming
to the rock awards

importante para sa mga gagamit ng httport!!! kung mag mirc kayo madalas kayong ma pping time out. kelangan kasi lagi kayong na piping. kelangan nyo ng pinger (!) pag ka log on nyo sa irc type nyo "/timer0 0 20 /ctcp [yourself_here] PING". ngayon meron nang pinger na mag pipinger sa inyo. hans free pingering dudes. kakaasar nga lang kasi ang daming ping na lalabas, pero kung gusto mong mag prepaid edi mag prepaid ka. viva el proxy! guerilla dial-up!

Comrades! who needs http-tunnel kung meron namang HTTPORT!!! keeping good things free and the world beautiful through st lasal's rabbit hole. so sweet

so sad. hndi na libre ang HTTP-TUNNEL. the beauty of the world is diminished.

para sa mga kalahok sa 2003 campaign, sadyain lamang ninyo ang link sa kanan. umantabay nalang para sa mga karagdagang updates.

one by one, book by book, i'm going to steal a library. god bless scanners (and ocr technology)

there's nothing as refreshing as pure hate. not pimply teenage angst, but unadulterated shit melting hate. hearing a stream of foul language issue unerringly from someone as tall as my nose with such conviction is truly inspiring. congratulations KD you scary little punk. once you learn to drive you'll be making kuya aj proud.

someday, someone looking in hospital employee records in california will discover that I died on september 2003 and that someone was sad.

THE LOCKPICK APPRENTICE
Part Four - Things Lost and Found

He had barely opened the door when the smell wafted out and laid grimy hands on him. Jon gagged and fought down the need to puke. Moments later, courage clutched in hand, he strode in to investigate. Much later, after a half-minute of retching, he had seen enough to piece together what must have happened.

By that time almost two weeks had passed since Janitor left for good. His replacement, Curly, who was as bald as Jon and three times as wide, never bothered to venture into the empty high school compound and so the maintenance room had remained unopened for all of that time. Which proved tragic for the dog.

It was probably Janitor’s habit to let the bitch sleep inside during the night and he would let her out the next morning. He was expecting her to give birth soon and maybe he figured she was safer inside. Sadly, Janitor lacked the foresight to predict his getting fired. He could have told someone else about the dog’s plight, but he forgot, and nobody really cared. Like everything else, she and her family became victims of indifference.

Had she not been weakened by labor she might have managed the two weeks with only a shallow basin of water. Not that she didn’t want to have kids, it’s just that times were hard and you can’t be a good parent when you’re trapped in the janitor’s closet. Her brood must have suckled her raw and bloody but what could she do? They were ravenous and they needed milk and mother was too skinny from malnutrition to spare any. Maybe she eventually died from a broken heart as she watched her pups wither one by one.

Damp from a previous rains had come in from the small, high window. That and heat had bloated the bodies, but the school dog still looked gaunt. Most of the soft parts were already alive with maggots and the sweet smell of rot and dog poo hung like a thick blanket. Bile threatened to make a come back even as salt water gathered under his eyes. Jon needed desperately to look at something else.

His eyes skittered across an assortment of knick-knacks on shelves. Janitor was a curator, no doubt, of things left behind. A chessboard, pencil cases, calculators, a legion of combs. There was even a jar with someone’s dentures but it was too big to belong to a student. Comic books, a harmonica, a poster of Rodin’s Thinker that someone had probably brought to show-and-tell. A generation of careless students and here was their story.

Jon was only barely registering all of it until his survey came to a copy of the New Testament with a navy blue cover. It pinned down a piece of pink paper on the worktable. From four steps away he recognized the pattern of stars that trimmed the stationery, and his insides twisted. He closed the gap and picked it up.

What use is a fine day if the sun spurns you?
The caress of breezes only a prelude to abandonment
Is it not better to cease the charade?
To quit the stage for better actors
Who might do more to warm your heart
Than I ever could
Was I not Europa for you Jove?
Why lead me to foreign altars
Only to slaughter my love
But even as I bleed
I bleed but for you

09/07/1997 10:35 PM

The date froze him into a state of surprise and old despair. No one had mentioned a suicide letter; as far as he knew, there wasn’t any. But who, after all, had found the body? Janitor could have swiped her lunch money had he wanted to. But that didn’t make sense. Why would Janitor keep this? Did he like the poetry? Did he need the paper to wipe his ass? Did he simply forget to tell? Maybe he only remembered the day after and wasn’t willing to raise the issue by then, since it was another proof of his forgetfulness. Possibly.

His thoughts turned to the note itself. The handwriting was impeccably neat, which was typical of her. Jon doubted he could manage such clarity when it was his turn to die. He’d probably be too busy slobbering on his pillow.

And they’d probably pull the plug if I started writing verse, he thought to himself.

Back to the note. Who was she talking to? A secret boyfriend? Now why is that thought somehow upsetting?

Though he did not do so consciously, Jon had a deep and abiding hatred of secrets. He disliked not knowing, disliked it when things are being kept from him. And as he held the pink stationery, the words written on it pried and worried away at his thoughts and would not go away.

Europa. It sounded familiar to him, something he must have read in the past. Greek mythology probably, since she added Jove, alias Jupiter. He had a feeling the name was significant and he almost scratched his head off in frustration.

Something in his peripheral vision tugged his eyes to the right and downward. A pile of rags. And within the folds… a pair of tiny eyes.

For the third time that morning, Jon was completely off-guard.

Probability would tell us that the chances of a newborn staying alive without its mother was very much close to zero. And if you extend the hypothesis beyond the first day, the chances were absurd. And yet that afternoon Jon brought home the last surviving puppy of the school dog’s litter. And for a while, Jon was happy.

i think i have a tendency to be undecisive. i think. actually, i'm not really sure... wait! i'm positive that i'm indecisive. i'm absolutely unsure.

ang saya saya ko! nakahanap ako ng dice roller para sa irc. deric, alan, pwede na tayo maglaro! tapos nasakop ko na ren and buong asia minor at bahagi ng balkans! tang inang mga griyego yan, walang nakatakas! tinatamad pa ako ituloy yung istoryang nasa baba. mag iisip muna ako storya para sa dnd. pero may tanong ako: mayron pakayang pork n beans sa kusina? at dapat bang kumain muna ako bago ko lusubin ang antioch?

THE LOCKPICK APPRENTICE
Part Three : The Tinker’s Tools

It was on one of his forays into the half abandoned school that Jon came upon Janitor’s lockpick.

Though Janitor will henceforth be known for being a petty criminal, he is also notorious for being amazingly forgetful. His absent-mindedness bordered on the supernatural; it defied logic. Which made him all the more interesting a character for Jon’s entertainment.

After school hours, Janitor would mop classroom A. After that he would proceed to classroom B. Then on to classroom C. And the room after that. Sometime later, he would step out into the hallway, wrinkle his play dough face, then proceed to classroom B, only to find that someone has mysteriously mopped it in advance. He would then catch Jon watching him and Janitor would send him a wave of bad vibes in two blinks. He would then huffily stride into classroom C and mop it needlessly anew.

For Jon, it was a sitcom.

He first realized that Janitor had lost his keys when Jon happened upon him trying to open a locked maintenance room. There was much rattling metal noises and wrist twisting and he watched the man unnoticed for a while.

The door finally yielded a click and opened.

“Awright!” Jon said, too loudly on purpose.

Janitor yelped some expletives but not before dropping something on the floor. Jon got a good look at it before it was snatched from view.

The doughface tried nonchalance “It’s late. Go home”

“Where are your keys?” countered the boy.

In the end, Jon’s silence was bought by a caramel sundae and a promise to let him have two puppies when the school dog gave birth. Predictably, when Janitor left the school for good, he forgot his lockpick and it has now found it’s way into Jon’s eager hands.

It did not look very impressive. In fact, it looked like it was once a tweezer that was cleaved apart. In his grip it felt cool and slick, and somehow, sneaky.

With thoughts of espionage and daring bank heists in his head, he proceeded to wrestle into submission every door handle within reach. He met with mixed results; the easiest to open by far were the stainless steel knobs whose large keyholes admitted the sliver of metal easily. He found that at a certain depth you had to lift the pick just so while simultaneously twisting the handle until the click happens. But it didn’t work consistently so the better theory was dumb luck plus frustrated energy.

It was when he finally opened the maintenance room that Jon was to encounter the most disturbing thing he would see in his short life.

THE LOCKPICK APPRENTICE

Part Two : The school and its stories

Apart from making time capsules in his spare time, Jon often went with his mother to school. He wasn’t enrolled but he was free to wander the half empty premises at his leisure.

The fact was, after two decades of facilitating young minds, the school was closing down. The reasons weren’t particularly clear to Jon but there was talk that a new shopping center was to be built in its place. Already, the high school department had not opened for this school year and so Jon didn’t get to see any of his peers. Some had probably transferred a few blocks away, to the nice private school administered by nuns. And it probably wont be long before the school relinquishes the last batch of graduates and got down to the sordid task of expiring.

But there seemed to be no hurry. The school was closing down and it was doing so at a depressingly slow pace. More aptly, it was withering away.

The whole affair made Jon sad as he paced along tidy and dead corridors. Growing up without a father, school was the next best thing he had. It taught him legions of sports and games, how to read the clock, find the value of x, and how to tie a tie. And he would miss the library the most, and all its attendant old book smells.

And the school shared its stories with him too. He found that after all the initial pity and sympathy you get from being terminal, people begin a rigorous campaign to ignore you in the most polite manner possible. Oh they still talk to you, laugh at your jokes, invite you to parties, but there is a sense of… otherness. Like they speak to you from the other side of a fishbowl or the opposite bank of a river. To both youth and grown-up, he was the personification of Mortality, and his presence was surreptitiously denied.

And so, from the fringe of the world, Jon watched the acts of the play unfold; an ensemble cast, each one with a tale. James rooted about his classmates’ bags when everyone else was at the cafeteria. He bribed Jon once with a leather glove so he would keep quiet, but Jon only agreed when he gave up the left glove as well. Loo was good at math and could give you square roots of integers without a calculator. Belinda liked Maritin, but Martin liked Linda Grace, but Linda Grace only liked other girls. Tami collected coins, and her collection would have been bigger had James not decided to start a collection of his own. Janitor got fired after he got caught smuggling twenty staplers and innumerable paper clips out of the school in his duffel bag. Mr. Diego was one of his favorite teachers because he lent Jon a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. Mr. Castro, the P.E. teacher-slash-cadet trainer, wore women’s underwear when he shot some hoops at night.

By far the most often repeated and engrossing of the school’s yarns was the Suicide of Susan May. She was a pretty but frightfully timid girl, and Jon liked her if only because, like him, she lived on the outskirts of polite company. She wasn’t especially bright but at times he would detect a glimmer of perverse wit from the handful of words she substituted for conversation. Best of all, she didn’t treat him like a walking cadaver.

It was Janitor who found her first. She had hung herself from a noose of electrical cords lashed to the ceiling of a classroom. They days that followed were a spectacle and Jon could remember the vans of TV stations parked outside the school and the horrendous wail of the grieving mother. He didn’t cry at all during those unreal times, but a picture of Susan May found itself among the other detritus of Jon’s life, three feet below and heading for the future.

the banner promised tales so its about time i told one. as with most things i probably wont finish it but i'll try

THE LOCKPICK APPRENTICE

Part one : The boy named Jon

Jon was fifteen and he had leukemia. He didn’t really see this as a bad thing and he didn’t really feel sick at all. Not usually. The years and years of chemo poisoning were over and he could almost pretend to be a normal boy again. He did look sickly, however. He had the pasty pale complexion of a man who spent too much time in a dungeon. And his scalp was bare, though more out of choice now than as a consequence of disease and treatment. He liked to make his skull nice and shiny, and he was too accustomed to the absence of hair to wish them back any time soon.
He was thin and had the awkward gangling limbs of adolescence. He looked like a poster boy for UNICEF. But he had lips that always looked ready to smile and a dark, intelligent gleam in his eyes.
Jon was a smart boy but he didn’t really go to school nowadays. He would have started his first year in high school by now had he not spent more time in hospitals where they tried to torture him to health. His mother was a teacher at the school and tutored him during weeknights, which Jon enjoyed immensely. And there were nights when she would come home with new books in her plump arms for him to read. Those times were even better.
As I said, Jon really didn’t see this leukemia business with much sorrow. His only great regret was that he probably wont make it ‘till the millennium. He sometimes told himself that he would brave all the hospital pain he could if it would make him live at least two years longer. Something really special and cool might happen and he wont be there to see it. As a compromise he got a large powdered milk can, filled it with junk from his room, and buried it as deep as he could (which was about three feet). Maybe someday (in the next millennium maybe?) some archeologist will find it and say “Look at this. A boy used to live here. A boy named Jon.”

when you get to read an essay made by a stranger about herself you begin to imagine what she looks like. what her house is like, does she have any pets. you start to care about her story. especially if she is a mother with two adorable children that inspires her to keep working. especially if she wants to alleviate rural poverty and cares so much about the marginalized sector of our society. makes you all mushy and you want to wish her nice things.
then you read her NEO-PIR results and you tell yourself "Boy is she a fuckedupbasketcase"
you smugfaced basturd you

Ilan lang ang naalala ko mula sa highschool english class. Ginawan ren ng The Jerks ng kanta ito kaya natandaan ko. It conjures images of grumpy old men.

Dylan Thomas
October 27, 1914 ~ November 9, 1953


Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gently into that good night.
Old age should burn and rage at the close of day.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

"mind over merde" - to think "dam" instead of "flow"; paggamit ng lakas ng loob para pigilan ang sama ng loob; to drive fast from alabang to BF resort

theft has always been an appealing idea to me. it speaks of sneakiness and cunning, which are of course admirable qualities. in my opinion, theft is more subtle than robbery. stealth and not force is key to successful theiving. the suburban incarnation of theivery is shoplifting, or lifting. rich and poor alike participate in this perversion, for varying motives. there are several pointers to remember when engaging in a lift. first is the dress code. i firmly believe that clothes do not make a man. however, clothes can make statements and you don't want to wear one that screams "theif!". always look nice when you intend to pilfer. nothing flashy, just decent. girls should not look flirty, unless they are accomplices, in which case they serve as excellent decoys. second is to provide yourself with suitable parapharnalia to secure your loot. deep pockets, handbags, whatever is suitable. even better is to use props bought at the store itself to further reduce suspicion. girls should look into the value of long skirts for concealment purposes. third, you should practice your movements before and after the lift. never make eye contact. linger often on random items and pretend interest. you could even buy a few things to allay suspicion. if you think its appropriate, inquire about a few items but do not prolong the conversation to the point that you wont be easily forgotten. be faceless, unremarkable, very forgettable. fourth, know your prey. familiarize yourself with the system. know how many guards they have and how active they are at preventing theft. watch for mirrors and cameras. consider the possibility of plainclothes personnel who could be spying on customers. most stores are on high alert during busy days like sales or christmas, so best to keep your hands idle during these times. lastly, always prepare to be caught. note escape routes or possible places to ditch the evidence. don't panic, at least not inside the store. it would be best to wear running shoes or to wear extra clothes for a quick change. there is one other thing to watch out for, and you might not see it coming. it is more insidious than any theif and it will be your undoing. no stupid, its not love. beware of greed.

growing old isn't so bad. i'm anticipating the diminishing sex drive that would make my life much more wholesome. but there are two things that i don't want to happen when i'm old. i don't want alzheimer's and i don't want to stink. ang baho ng lola ko pare. oo mahal ko sya syempre kya lang parang ayoko syang kasama lagi kasi ang baho nya e. wala nman syang debilitating sickness o malubhang karamdaman. mabaho lang talaga sya. its like BO and morning breath in one package. its in her breath and on her skin. i've learned to associate the smell with old age pero yung lolo ko nman hndi mabaho. ayoko lang mangyari yung ayaw ako yakapin ng apo ko dahil mabaho ako. i'd need to bribe them to kiss me. which leads to my hypothesis that as we grow old the smellier we get. babies smell nice (usually). its during adolescence that all the discharges and secretions force us to seek refuge in deodorants and perfumes. then from there its downhill to rank perdition. i think that's how hermits originated. smelly old men that other people can't stand. while hermitage does have it's appeal i'd rather not stink and enjoy civilization

succotash - lima or shell beans and green corn cooked together (merriam webster's collegiate dictionary, tenth edition)
suffering succotash - what cats eat when they can't get canaries (see sour grapes); intrj. used to express anguish over the human condition "suffering succotash! what fools these mortals be!" (midsummer night's dream, william shakespeare)

official na. hindi ako tanggap sa UP. bale kailangan ko muna magtrabaho hanggang maka pag apply uli ako. kala ko naman madali lang makapasok. there's always next year.

because sinking ships empty their guts out into the ocean for the birds and seahorses to peruse
because this is my stab at posterity
because i can
becuase writing is therapeutic
because the world is big and lives are small
because hope is one of the most durable things known to man