"Leaning on the pedestal that holds my self denial
Firing the pistol that shoots my holy pride
Sitting here like wet ashes with x’s in
My eyes, and drawing flies"

Drawing Flies
by Soundgarden

Quarter past 5, sitting here staring at the void, marinating in the blank, wallowing in nothingness, the day is almost done, at least for me, here in this glorified prison...I remember what a friend once said about one of the companies we used to work for, that it was somewhat of a glorified version of a prison, the only difference is we get to use computers, other than that...everything's the same.

Someone told me there will be days like these.

I'm looking forward to going home, by myself on some jeepney playing "Kashmir" inside my head...looking at the people on their way home, some scurrying to some place they would rather be other than home, others seem content to pass time in the malls or in cafes or retaurants. I love the commute, I love the solitude...and I sometimes hate it when I see an acquaintance on the same ride...it might sound a bit uncouth but the jeepney is one of those places where I can be with myself...alone with my thoughts. So if by chance we meet at some jeepney stop, and I let you go ahead and decide to stay behind, please don't think of it as some act of disrespect.

There are times when I just want to be left alone.

I know it's kind of peculiar.

Ten minutes past 6.

The walls look bleak as the pale light of the flourescent bulbs cast a sick and pale wash over the concrete. And yous see the cracks come alive...one by one they appear and the scenery is sordid. There is an ill feeling that pervades the room. You want to bathe in some disinfectant or gargle rubbing alcohol just to get rid of the bad taste stuck in your mouth.

And your skin crawls.

And your spine tingles.

Your hair stands on ends.

Then your spirit breaks.

KORN

Guitarist Brian "Head" Welch, a founding member of Korn, has left the band and has rededicated his life to Christianity, according to the group's management. Read on, click here.

» from MTV.com

And also, thanks to lazyboy for the heads up...he's a huge KORN fan.

Invalid Litter Dept.
At The Drive-In

intravenously polite it was the walkie-talkies
that had knocked the pins down
as their shoes gripped the dirt floor
in the silhouette of dying
dancing on corpses' ashes

yeah, they had plans for him
they has spun the last of the pimps
corduroy, satin nailed jewelry lips
while the guillotine just laughed again
dancing on the corpses' ashes

paramedics fell into the wound
like a rehired scab at a barehanded plant
an anesthetic penance beneath
the hail of contraband

they had been defected and excommunicated
and all the pulses were subverted
and they made sure the obituaries
showed pictures of smoke stacks

a vivid dissection that mocked
the strut of vivisection
semi-automatic colonies
and a silencing that still walks the streets

in the company of wolves
was a stretcher made of
cobblestone curfews
the federales performed
their custodial customs quite well

callous heels
numbed in travel
endless maps made
by their scalpels

on my way
nails broke and fell
into the
wishing well

As the daily commute slowly becomes more and more unbearable, the heat sticks to you like mud. The faces stare back at you, eyes in a glazed and porcelain look, orbs darting to and fro. Wary and watchful. As the fumes rise and your head feels light, you might as well sniff glue and get things done. The smell is sickening and the heat gets to you, as you sweat like a stool pigeon under an interrogator's light in a dank room...sweating bullets, biting nails and then you fall. Down in a hole, big enough to fit your sorry ass.

The ride winds, zig-zags, and you get to think about things. Thoughts that you never would have entertained in the comfort of your own home, room or toilet After all, there are plenty of things to occupy you...at home, you sit idle and hollow.

The whole week was...consistent...TOO CONSISTENT as a matter of fact. Work, home, eat, sleep and shit. The strange thing is, I am not looking for something to disturb the cycle. And it scares me...I know I can be strange, BUT NOT THAT STRANGE.

Tomorrow we'll be spending the day at the beach with my family and some friends.

I'm really looking forward to it. At least something out of the ordinary...at least some disturbance in the balance.

I tweaked the design yet again..I wasn't too comfortable having my photo up as a masthead...even though I looked very comfy in that specific picture...even though this is my blog, I am really not that keen with the exposure, so I decided to replace it...with what looks to be a raygun...only problem is, after I uploaded the new masthead...the tip of the raygun looked too "phallic" so I decided to scrounge for another, more appropriate image, hence the new masthead...hope you like it because I had to constantly switch from Quark and Photoshop while making It, we don't want to give the impression to thOSe higher up that I am one lazy bastard...so one moment I'm busy as a bumble bee doing book layouts, when the coast is clear...it's operation masthead. I have to imagine that I'm doing all these things under duress and covertly just to spice things up because I COULD GO MAD AT ANY MINUTE IN THIS PLACE.

Anyway I'm pretty much ready for the weekend, I got 2 bottles of Tanduay Rum lapad left over from some weekend drinking binge just dying to be consumed.

Well, have a good weekend kids.

It never starts the way you'd expect it to go, and it always ends on a rather different note. Last Saturday night as we got to the beach, things got off to a shaky start, but we managed to salvage what was left of a seemingly awful turn of events and carried on like people often should...and on Sunday, well let's just say everything was right with the world, and everyone went home a happy person.

By the time we got home, my parents arrived shortly after we did with quite a pleasant surprise...my father, the ever excited grandfather-to-be bought the baby a crib, it's been months since he wanted to buy a crib for the baby but we thought it was still too early, but Kim's due at the end of April so we finally relented...what can I say but thank you to the 2 most wonderful parents a kid could ever have.

_

Someone at work remarked over lunch that the silence is almost driving her to the brink of madness. Yes, the silnece is overwhelming, you can hear the life being sucked out of you literally in the defeaning stillness. Today appears to be colder compared to other days, maybe it's because some people are not at work, not enough body heat to balance out the airconditioning and the frigid people in this place I suppose.

"we only come out at night,
we only come out at night,
the days are much too bright...
we only come out at night"

My hands are still sore from assembling the baby cabinet last night. It's a sure sign that you're going soft when assembling a cabinet for a few hours would result in the most painful pair of palms you can imagine. Years of mouse-clicking turns your hands to a soft mush, therefore making it useless in handling screwdrivers, hammers, pliers...and other manly tools...I used to be handy with tools, I could hammer, tighten, grip, bend and break stuff using tools with the greatest of ease, but last night was different...I seemed to have "girly hands", no offense to the ladies, but halfway through the job I was having a hard time gripping the screwdriver and was about to hit my head with the hammer for not buying the one that was already assembled.

But sure enough I finished the cabinet albeit not in record time but still, a pretty decent job for someone who hasn't used tools for quite a while now...and besides, I wanted to do it for the baby, sure I could have bought a pre-assembled one and spared myself the agony but where's the fun in that? I wanted to do the assembling myself, no matter how small or how painstaking it would be, I wanted to do it for my child, to have stories to tell her about how we got that cabinet, and how Mommy and Daddy toiled for countless hours until early dawn, trying to put that cabinet together just for her.

I had fun yesterday, looking for the baby's first cabinet, going from one mall to another, deciding on which one to buy and then putting it together that evening with Kim...to be honest, it's the most fun I had in weeks.

Last night I had a very disturbing dream. I dreamt that I was in the bathroom, taking a bath when all of a sudden, out of nowhere came 5 rats...BIG ONES, the ones that would give a cat a heart attack. Now if you still don't know yet, rats the size of cats are one of a few things that make me scream in a high pitched voice and jump up chairs like a girl...don't ask me what the others are! I had no bad experiences with these creatures that would explain the said reaction, I just don't want to be within 10 feet of them, let alone in the bathroom...NAKED

So on with my dream...there I was, butt-naked, all wet and soapy and there were these 5 rats, all jumping at me; you'd think these were ninja rats because they jumped with great height and precision. They were all trying to attack and all I could find to defend myself was the "tabo". I was desperately swatting these fuckers away like flies, everytime a rat would jump at me, I would be swinging my trusty "tabo" like a tennis racquet...backhand, forehand, I served and volleyed like Pete-fucking-Sampras in his prime.

As I was trying to fend these rodents off, one sneaky little bastard came up from behind which concerned me because I was still naked at this point...but then my alarm clock rang at exactly 4:30 AM for my morning run and I woke up, just in the nick of time. Thank God I had to set my alarm at that precise time for me to jog

And even though it's only a dream, I thanked whoever invented alarm clocks and also  jogging and it's new benefit which is...sparing your ass from rat bites.

"You won't see me in yellow". As I uttered those words, and as dust flew from my feet up the air, wafting in the morning breeze, everything was not right with the world...or in this case, the day. I can be too overdramatic and I can be shallow at times, but I will not be caught dead in yellow. As I wiped the sweat from my brow, and as the jeepneys belched fumes that were as black as any night we'd ever seen and as we stood there, our hands rubbing our bellies and our eyes, blinded by the sun, we watched the same faces, the same limbs swinging to the beat of the drums, sirens, car horns, buzzers and beepers, they set the background as we hear spirits break, watched egos bruised, and saw hearts broken...lying on the pavement, on dirt roads, alley ways; lost in shanty towns, lost in translation...in time, forgotten and left for dead.

The room feels cold, but if I wore my jacket I'd be missing out on all the fun. I want to feel numb, that's what I was aiming for. The place is dull, as dull as the knife I feel stuck in my back, it's too quiet; morgues would be a much more inviting place than this. The walls have stains and the pipes weep, they weep and they moan and the ground shakes. The city could lie in ruins and I would be oblivious to all that goes on.

The city could be in ruins and I'd be dead.

My palms are sweating, as I went to the bathroom to take a leak my palms were perspiring...profusely, and the stalls looked bleak, as the doors were all opened and the sink was damp and the urinals smelled like antibiotics gone stale.

I drown myself in music, because that's the only thing to keep me awake, I write in my blog...not because blogging is considered "cool" nowadays but because it's the only way I can keep my sanity...in here. I could write a half decent paragraph and I could care less. The day winds down, and you can see signs of life, the air becomes breathable again and you can hear...laughter. I said I'd never be caught dead in yellow...so I am in black. Black as the night, as a raven perched on a branch, as the colors fade, as the music stops and as my fingers feel cold and lifeless.

In between watching cooking shows and cartoons, moving cabinets from one corner of the room to another and eating butter on toast, it was quite a fun weekend. Not the "hang-out and get totally soused on a weekend" kind of fun, although the idea would be entertainment in itself but the weekend had "wholesome" written all over it...unlike last week at the beach at my bother-in-law's birthday party where people were strewn all over the sand, the beach looked like Iwo Jima on D-Day and all you can hear is the sour, stomach-turning, blood-curdling sound of people (in this case...me) vomiting...MAN IT WAS UGLY!

We got yet another cabinet yesterday (how many cabinets does a baby need anyway?) but in fairness, the 3 of us will be sharing this one. Lazyboy texted and invited me to a basketball game, I got his message when we were at the mall, my phone died on me as I was about to answer which was fortunate for him...he wouldn't have had a chance. I'd take his lazy ass to school...heheheheee. But on a serious note, even though you didn't get to join Ginny this time getting that "piece of paper" you're still cool in my book and besides, what's one semester? At least you'll have all the time in the world to do whatever the hell it is that you like to do...like being lazy, hehe.

Don't be in too much of a hurry, everything happens for a reason and in due time.
_

"the silicon chip inside her head
gets switched to overload
and nobody's gonna go to school today
she's going to make them stay at home

and daddy doesn't understand it
he always said she was good as gold
and he can see no reason
'cause there are no reasons
what reason do you need to be shown

tell me why
i don't like mondays
tell me why
i don't like mondays
i don't like
i don't like
i don't like mondays
tell me why
i don't like mondays
i want to shoot
the whole day down, down, down
shoot it all down"

I Don't Like Mondays
 Boomtown Rats

Monday...at work. Same shit, different day.

It's hard trying not to feel alienated in this place, it's like being alone in space. Although I've never tried it...being alone in space that is, but I think this feeling is the closest I'll get to being solitary in it's dark expanse. It's the feeling of solitude that sucks you into a vortex of indifference spending 8 hours here...as if it's actually 8 hours, more like an eternity.

"Brave New World" flashes in my head in big, block letters like a distress signal warning of impending implosion. People here act as if being stiff and vapid is de rigueur. You look at their eyes and it seems they are in some eternal "soma" holiday. As I have said in the past, it's too sterile. We are outsiders here, strangers in a strange land.

We wanted to find some common ground but it's no use. Not that we didn't try, it just won't work.

It's cold...everything is white and gray.

If I take my headphones off...nothing.

I have found more questions than answers here. And don't tell me that I'm looking for a resolution in the wrong place..heck, people can even find Jesus in a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich or Mother Mary in a potato chip let alone find some closure in your workplace or in any other place for that matter, but it's a futile attempt. The only thing you'll find here is yourself...alone in a crowd.

"There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb. "

Comfortably Numb
Pink Floyd

_

THE FLOYD ROCKS!

Having a Pink Floyd moment...bear with me. 

Yes, another redesign and this early I'm thinking this won't last a month...guess I'm just living up to the dubious distinction of being easily bored with a design that I make. I have been blogging in almost a year with this one and it's undergone so many facelifts Michael Jackson would be considered a rank amateur.

As we patiently sat in the adjacent room waiting for Kim's turn for her ultrasound, people kept trickling in, most of them pregnant women. I stepped out and went to the rest room and I swear eveywhere I turned I saw pregnant women. maybe it's just me getting used to seeing Kim pregnant for 8 months now or I'm going crazy, I swear...everytime I turned there was a pregnant woman lurking. In the lobby, the pharmacy, the information counter...I thought "if there was a pregnant lady in the men's room I guarantee I'd flip out".

Both sides of the family are anticipating this event, my side wants a girl because the number of boys to that of girls is very distinct, I'd give you the exact ratio but I suck at anything Math related so let's just say the boys far outnumber the girls. Kim's family on the other hand just wants to know so they can stop calling the baby "it", the gender ratio in her family is equally distributed so I think there's no problem there.

Our turn came up and so we went into this small room where the doctor was waiting. She asked me to come in so I can see, then she proceeded to do the ultrasound at first all I saw was black, and then I saw stubby, little fingers then I saw what appeared to be the toes then the feet, I saw what resembled a spine which the doctor confirmed, then she said let's look at the face...she tried different angles and then we were face to face, the baby got the cutest nose I've seen and then we saw the lips, we couldn't see the eyes that well, he was covering them with his forearm.

Then at this point, the doctor said "Okay, let's see if it's a boy and a girl...", so she looked for the baby's genitals, but by this time the baby turned and the doctor was having a hard time looking for a good view. So she tried turning the baby, then BAM! I SAW BALLS. The doctor said, "Hey, there are the balls...right there." Thanks but I think I know what balls look like. It was quite a funny thing to look at because the balls floated around and they parted, like what Moses did to the Red Sea...the things parted...for what I haven't the faintest of clues.

By this time Kim was giggling. Then the doctor said "Okay, now let's find THE PENIS."

So she then proceeded to locate my kid's penis but all we saw was something that looked like a piece of Hersheys Kisses chocolate hung upside down...then she said, "That's it...it's his penis." (I'll say this now, don't worry dude...it'll grow). So there you have it, Kim and I will be having a BABY BOY very soon. So I guess we'll be calling him Nathan, unless Kim changes her mind or we find a more fitting name than that...who knows?

4 days off for Holy Week.

No special plans, I'll just stay home and catch up on some sleep, eat and just be a slob. I've been feeling like shit for the past couple of days, my cold just won't quit.

Well, see you on Monday.

Happy Easter, in case I can't update this blog in the coming days.

4 days seems never enough.

By far that was the quickest Holy Week I had in years. Spent most of the time sleeping and just gorging myself on whatever my mother puts on the plate, to hell with my running...I can always pick up where I left off starting this week. How can you resist the seafood spread at home for 4 days...YOU CAN'T! All you can do is stuff yourself and ask for seconds. resistance is futile, as a line in the movie "Dodgeball" went..."It's as useless as a cock flavored lollipop!"

Kim and I went to their house on Black Saturday for a sleep-over which was cool...lazyboy was there (he's always there...dude should pay rent! hehe...joke ra pre!) then we had a mini-movie-marathon, Beetlejuice, Dodgeball and Terminator 3 on Sunday with the brothers and sisters-in-law...a good way to spend Easter Sunday.

Now it's Monday...I wish it was Sunday, 'cause that's my fun day...It's just another manic-fucking-Monday.

HOLY CRAP! I should really get a grip.

I passed by my old high school this morning on my way to work. It seemed that they were having their graduation rites because the area held up traffic for quite some time...which gave me a chance to look back at life in high school, and the cringe factor just went up a notch. HIgh school sucked for me, I could never understand some people saying that "it was the best time of thier lives"...or the fact that I couldn't relate to that Sharon Cuneta song.

It was not the worst, but definitely not the best time either.

Looking back, it wasn't all that bad, I found some of my closest friends back in high school, some of them still are.

Then as the jeepney moved, I just gave a faint smile.

I finally finished tweaking lazyboy's blog design, I was feeling lazy as well yesterday so I had to cheat (it's just my template, rehashed...so what? SUE ME!...hehehe), anyway it's been a busy day and I really have nothing much to write or talk about, except for maybe this morning when Kim texted me twice because she felt some contractions and the fact that we have to monitor these more often because any day now Jacob's going to want out and before you know it out comes this eat-shit-piss-cry-and sleep machine.

The days seem so fast, it's the middle of the week...

Things around here are slow though, I'm working on this long-ass book but it's all good, it beats getting bored and staring into empty space.

It's been days since I have posted something "worthwile"...then I ask myself, what is worthwhile? To write something that happened on your way to work...been there. Or muse about a certain someone, rant over a certain fucked up incident or rave about the coolest movies, bands, gadgets and thingamajigs...done that. Yet what is it that is considered worthwile? The things that you waste a good 20-30 mnutes of your life writing or reading?

I feel half the time I post shit...like that Frankenstein's monster on Conan O'Brein who wastes a minute of the audience's time by alluding to the most inane objects in the attempt to get laughs and in the process well...waste a minute or two...I'm like that. Call it a nagging propensity for an audience with the world if you will. I want to say something and what better way to say something than the internet.

But the question is...am I really saying something?

Who cares.
_

The past few days I have been busy. That's all I can say...book churning has been a breeze lately.

The days have been hot as of late...El Niño sucks...wait, is it really official? Are we really experiencing El Niño?

I wish it would just rain.

The best part after a downpour is that everything looks so clear, so vibrant...alive...new. It's like having the rain wash away all the dirt, the misery, the pain and you get to start over. Everything is clean...it's a new beginning...a fresh start.
_

A mad season is in the offing. There is something heavy that hangs in the air, it's so heavy I can feel my shoulders give way to the crushing weight...so many questions in my head I don't know where to begin. There's a feeling of quiet anticipation, a painful wait that we all must endure. I hate waiting but I have to. I am not one to rush into things and I won't start now.

The suspense is killing me.