Saturday, August 9, 2008

Rolling Eyes To The Tune Of Maddening Sighs

My band that's immensely influenced by Black Sabbath (first 4 albums) and Mastodon (all albums) was supposed to have a band practice RIGHT NOW, 1pm to 3pm, on this lovely sunny Sunday afternoon but at around 12:55pm, I received a text message from my guitarist bandmate saying he and our drummer (they're brothers) won't be able to make it because of some last minute family affair they had to attend.

Fuck.

So here I am at the internet cafe where I printed my thesis back in 2005. The band practice space my band uses is just above where I'm at right now. I've been awake for about 19 hours now - and counting - and my brain's too fucking fried to think of anything remotely progressive or constructive to do. About two months ago, I've read somewhere that normal human beings use only about 10% of their brains in everyday functions whereas the terribly shrewd fuckers, like Albert Einstein, use (or in Einstein's case, used) about 15% of their brain's potential. That is some fascinating and frightening information. First, come on, if that wasn't fascinating, then Michael Jackson is indeed white. Second, it's scary because if normal humans only use a tenth of their brain's capabilities in their lives, there's a whole lot of untapped possibilities that's being left wasted.

I wouldn't want that to fucking happen to me. Being ugly and destitute is one thing but being a fucking dumb piece of shit is quite another. I'd like to use at least 12% of my brain. Ha.

The day is still young and I am not yet on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of sleep deprivation. There's still a lot of possible constructive shit to be done.

(a lightbulb flashes on top of my head)

I'll go home.

Drink black coffee.

Work on my my zine IA's issue #8's layout while listening to Bad Religion's late 1980's to early 1990's albums.

Then I'll think about the girl I've been thinking about these past several weeks and wonder if she's thinking about me, too...What a fucking loser, huh?

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Broken Thoughts

I've just finished listening to Iron Maiden's Killers album the other day when a string of vicious facts hit me hard: I was (A) not dating any woman, (B) I'm ugly (which is greatly correlated to fact letter A) and (C) I'm terribly broke (which in itself greatly affects the previous two reasons).

Simply put, I'm a fucking loser. The funny thing is, being a loser all these years has afforded me the convenience to relax a bit. I don't know about you but listening to music, a whole vast of music, brings therapeutic effects on me. A solitary activity that, err, does not attract women. I couldn't help thinking about it. As much as I'd like to just chill out and shit, I couldn't make myself to do so. Completely, that is. I'm slowly threading my way through it successfully and I think making zines, writing, and music will eventually help me swallow the Vicious Facts easily.

Busrides


Riding buses in Metro Manila is an interesting experience. It keeps you grounded. You get to ride with people that's extremely different from each other, from bank tellers to hard labor workers, to call-center agents to bored 9-to-5ers, a busride somehow acts as some sort of an equalizer to a palpably unequal society.

The weirdest shit I've seen during a busride happend early this year, around late January. There was this female call-center agent who got punched in the head by the female bus conductor. First of all, female bus conductors (those who sell tickets) are rare. Second, the physical commotion happened moments after I boarded the bus which was on the corner of Taft Avenue and Gil Puyat Avenue in Pasay and Makati's border.

Anyway, the verbal tussle between the female passenger and female bus conductor apparently started when the former was insisting she had paid her fare already. The latter was vehemently denying this and was creatively cursing in Filipino, curses which I honestly think don't have any English counterparts but them curses were very very intense in meaning, if you get my drift. Then the bus conductor began giving the female call-center agent a beatdown, an intense one. It was bad. I couldn't believe the other passengers were not doing anything about the situation. Maybe they were just minding their own business. As impossible as it may seem, I think there could have been at least a witness to the situation if the female call-center agent had paid her fare or not but no one was stepping up to alleviate the tension. Eventually, I've had enough of the uncalled-for violence and I tried to pacify the bus conductor and told her to calm down. After about a couple more punches, she miraculously stopped.

The female call-center agent then began telling the conductor that she had indeed paid her fare already and the former flashed her company/employer's ID to the latter to prove that she has integrity and has paid already. But the bus conductor wouldn't have any of it. On a side note, I think the call-center chick had lost her ticket already, for some reason.

Two blocks or so later, the call-center agent left. Minutes after she had left, the bus conductor was still as pissed as shit.

I paid my fare moments before the aforementioned confrontation occurred. When I finally arrived at my stop on Ayala Avenue in Makati, the bus conductor asked me if I had paid my fare already. I showed her my ticket and she looked at it with distrust screaming from her face. I left the bus unscathed from any violence, verbally or otherwise.

I think a degree of injustice happened that day.