I wasn't feeling really Holy Thursday yesterday, all I did was eat, play Kingdom Hearts II, play The Sims 2 Pets (for the PS2, asa pang kaya ng computer ko ang Sims 2), and some other stuff. I was feeling pretty bad and unspiritual and stuff. Yeah, I know, I can pretty much be a big airhead rituals-and-stuff-aren't-really-important kind of guy but it's pretty hard when you've observed something for almost all your life.

I (kind of) remember the days when the house was uber-quiet during Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Black Saturday. There wasn't anything on TV except some Christian stuff my older sister and I would enjoy. Of course, being a kid, I'd be all interested how and why Jesus was crucified and stuff, the whole Christianity thing was still something new to me and I accepted everything as truth. The househelp would sometimes scare us about aswangs and all other evil things that run around since Christ would be dead for two days or something. Other than that, there was nothing much to do and it woud be so boring that a kid would really take naps and stuff.

So while spending a little time thinking about the lost days of innocence, I remembered that Holy Thursday is also Visita Iglesia day. We would go and pray a decade of the rosary in as many churches as we can before the clock strikes midnight. I would always end up being left sleeping in the car after we've gone to 3 or 4 churches. I couldn't really stay up late when I was a kid. 9 o'clock and 10 o'clock were very, very late times for me, that was back then when I was still the family's wonderkid and Scooby-doo at 7:30pm was the last show I watch before I go to sleep. Now I can stay awake until the last church and stuff and I'm quite surprised to see my younger siblings being able to stay awake the whole time. Must have come from watching stupid telenovelas on TV.

I took a warm bath after we had lunch. The water wasn't as hot as I wanted it to be but it was pretty okay I guess. I know, it's crazy, who the hell in her/his right mind would take a hot bath in this infernal summer heat? Me, that's who. I got dressed and thought about changing my bedsheets, folding some clothes, and generally cleaning my part of the room up, but I remembered that Studio23 was showing a Gilmore Girls Marathon and it had been ages since I've watched Gilmore Girls. I turn on the TV and sit in fron of it for 3 hours or so, immersing myself in the town of Stars Hollow and the lives of Rory and Lorelai Gilmore. It was while watching that I found what I was missing this Holy Thursday. Studio23's 10 hour marathons. That's what we've come to be used to doing every holy week, sit in front of the TV and watch 7th Heaven all day long. I just had to laugh at myself for thinking that I was feeling unspiritual and stuff.

Ever feel like you're stuck in a fork in the road? One road doesn't seem to be used more than the other, they both look like they haven't been used much. Yup, both of them are roads less travelled. Those things exist right? Especially when you've wandered off the main road, spent some time communing with nature (getting lost), and found another road which would hopefully lead to a meal and a warm bed.
Both of them would involve getting through some dark parts of the forest, a bit of getting snagged by thorny bushes, and chance encounters with strange creatures who may or may not eat you alive. Both of them would presumably lead to someplace safe. One of them may lead to home, the other to... I don't know, a doorway to the land of the elves or something? The problem is that you know you'll constantly pine over the path you didn't take. You'll constantly be plagued by what-ifs and questions of whether you chose right or wrong.

And then you'd hear an animal, it would presumably be a predator. It seems to be coming closer, you're going to have to choose, and fast. There's no turning back once you get started on one path. The wild animal thing's getting closer, where do you go? You flip a coin to decide and you go on the path dictated by the coin. You run until it would seem that you're out of danger. You reach the edge of the forest, you see the main road again. You should feel happy actually but there's always that feeling that you should've taken the other path. The damn what-if. In the back of your mind though, you still know that whatever path you've chosen, you'd still feel the same. So the best thing to do would be to go on, walk endlessly, straying from time to time but still getting somewhere.

Classes finally being over, I spent some time reading a couple of self-help books. (Madz, binasa ko yun habang nag-break ako sa pagbasa ng readings tungkol sa GATT) One of them was Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby's "Procrastinator's Success Kit". It basically justifies procrastination and says that we all have reasons why we continually delay doing stuff. It also gives descriptions of eight procrastinating styles:

-The Back Burner Procrastinator (I'll get inspired later)
-The Action Junkie Procrastinator (I work well under pressure)
-The Rebellious Procrastinator (You can't make me)
-The Perfectionist Procrastinator (I could've done a lot better if I had more time)
-The Crazymaking Procrastinator (I said, I'll do it)
-The "Nice" Procrastinator (I just can't say "no")
-The "Don't Rely on Me" Procrastinator (Why are they asking me to do this?)
-The Feeling Good Procrastinator (This is a drag... should I really be doing this?)

The book also provides combat tactics for each style. It's actually a fun read and there isn't a super woohoo! inspirational tone.

Anyway, as I read the book, I find that I belong to 7 out of the 8 procrastinating profiles. Not bad for somebody who's been doing it for almost a decade now. The only thing I don't think I do is give gifts, pamper people, and be all "nice" to cover up for my lazy ass. So after knowing that I've finished the book, you'd probably think that I'm going to do a complete 180 degree turn and be all productive and stuff. You've got that wrong, I'll probably turn maybe a few degrees from time to time, that is if I really get to working on fixing my life. I've actually read a lot of self-help books that only made me feel depressed when I can't don't do what it says. (Remembers reading 7 habits of highly effective teens) and anyway

"Habit is habit, and not to be flung out the window... but coaxed down the stairs a step at a time." - Mark Twain

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now, to incur the wrath of people

Guide to the Philippines

very educational, very cliche, very sad

Well, thanks to Holy Week being two weeks from now, everywhere is now experiencing finals season. My older sister, younger sister #1, and I are still up right now because of damn freaking tests. I'm still studying for PolSci150 even though the chances are very high that I'll fail. I don't have the guts to go down in wondrous flames by just writing "WALA AKONG ALAM >:D Ha-Hah!" in the blue book. And there might be a chance I can scrape a 3 or a 4.

I'm really starting to consider scrapping my plans of shifting to Diliman with all that's happening right now. I'm still not loving Political Science.

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So... while waiting for the muse of studying to hit me, I picked up one of younger sister #1's friend's scrapbook, mainly just to criticize it to death. Anyway, I never got to reading all the dedications and crap since I get turned off by every abbreviated word I see in the damn scrapbook. I'm starting to think it's a serious problem, txt language ws mst prbably invnted 2 mke communicxn easier in cellphones n stuf, the problem was that they even use it on paper where they have all the time in the world to complete the words. Maybe I'm overreacting over actions that are most likely caused by a want to conform to the hive-mind of the average highschool sheep but bleh! Come on!

I'm also wondering why it's pretty l33t to be 4bl3 to ^/ri+3 in l33t sp34k, but it's annoying ass the ninth ring of the abyss to write keoh, ingatz, rokkin, guyz and all that other stuff that adolescents seem to love doing right now...

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Now since it's Finals Season, it's also probably Zit Season. I have three gargantuan zits on my nose right now.

Once again, I've sent myself to a world of pressing issues. Thanks to my favorite hobby, procrastination, I'm now taking a crash course in Comm2. Yes, a subject I should've completed long, long, ago. How's that for stupidity? Well, if I get through this, I'll probably have a hyper-inflated ego and do it again with another subject. (PolSci14 I'm keeping an eye on you) If I don't, I'd fail, lose 2 subjects worth of credit, be all emo , and say I want to die when I really don't mean it. And then of course there are other things that bother me other than school. So, to hell with me.

A year ago I'd probably be more depressed than I am now and getting ready for full panic mode until my brain shuts down and people can see me staring into space
just looking all depressed and weird and stuff. Today, I just look around and see that I'm in a familiar place, the only difference is that I don't think luck will be on my side this time. I've even stopped moping about being in a situation like this. Parang nasanay na e.

Since I'm sabotaging school, and some serious stuff about extra-curricular activities, what the hell would that mean? I'd like to stop studying? I'd like to quit the Chorale? No, not really. They're fun, I would have probably killed myself if it weren't for them. (now don't think I have a serious emotional attachment to those two things. I'm thinking the joy I get out of them can't be seen at face-value.)

Now isn't the shuffle function in media players nice? While writing this, it's played "One Fine Day" by Natalie Merchant, "Way Back into Love
" from Music and Lyrics, and now "Colorblind" by the Dresden Dolls.

As always, I've lost the point of the post so yes, you have wasted your time if you read this.

The thought of people having wasted a little time reading this post kind of brings me a little sadistic joy. Evil, eeeeeeeviiiiiiiiil. EeeEeevil!

(And this post ends while Windows Media Player plays the Jason Nevins remix of Duran Duran's Sunrise) ooh, I'm gonna be late for econ 101

While reading or after reading a book, I usually find myself thinking and sometimes speaking and acting like the people in the book. There was a time I read Seinlanguage, Jerry Seinfeld's book, and for a short time (thank God for that!) I was talking like a stand-up comic. Then there was a time I read something called "Awit ng Paglaya", a novel about being inside detention camps in the time of Martial Law (I usually don't read those but my cousin asked me to read it for her book report). After finishing the book, I was thinking in straight filipino. And of course the one I never stop telling people, the time I read "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix". I got gloomy and emo-ish whenever I put the book down.

I go to Jessica Zafra's blog and see this

So two things are on my mind:

1.) It's nice to know I'm not alone.
2.) I thought I was special. (yes, the world revolves around me)

I reluctantly attended the miting de avance today (I hope I spelled it right) and learned quite a few things:

-Acronyms are totally required.

Yes it's nice to see that you were pretty creative with coming with these cute names and acronyms for your projects but too much of them make me sick. I thank my faulty memory for not remembering any of them and what the hell they actually stand for.

-You don't really need a specific platform in order to win

Maybe it's just me but I think most of them had very general proposals to convince people to vote for them. The main clincher could probably well be: Kung tunay kang iskolar ng bayan, iboboto niyo kami.

-Sly ad hominem statements are greatly appreciated

Given my faulty memory, I do not have any examples for this. Nangyari yun, ayun. Yup, bad journalism.

-I am so totally slow

People were giving out sticks with crepe paper of different colors attached to them. I didn't know what they were for and I kept on waving them like they were rhythmic gymnastics ribbons. I only found out what they were for when I saw that the colors on the thingy stick were the colors of a certain party. "Ah ganoon pala 'to," I said with a great amount of surprise when I found out. Avon and Mishee just laughed at my apparent stupidity.

-Coffee is bad for me

I drank maybe 16oz of Iced coffee and I felt trembly all over for an amount of time. And then there was a period of apparent brain-death nothing was just going through my brain.

-If somebody gives a pretty good answer, people are free to copy it

During the open forum, somebody asked, "Do you believe in Destiny?" Everybody just answered, "No, I don't believe in Destiny. Destiny is just the excuse of the weak yaddayaddayadda. I believe that we create our own destinies churvachurvachurva, I believe in free will blahbidiblah." Nobody answered otherwise (kaya nga everybody di ba?). Hmm... maybe I'd write about what I think about Destiny some time from now.

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Damn, I'm feeling pretty political right now. Must be the coffee. Or maybe it's that serious. A nice thing to ask about campaign promises and stuff in general" "And then?"

A sad fact you can see in the UP manila student council elections is that it mirrors the election campaign going on in "the real world". Campaign flyers and posters can be seen everywhere and, sad but true, only generate a helluva lot of mess. Dirty politics and stuff abound and the candidates are suddenly friendlier than they were when they were just part of the sheep. Posters of candidates are destroyed and/or covered by posters of the rival candidate. Hypocrisy reigns.

True story, acquaintances of mine were putting up posters for their friend who was campaigning. A rival candidate's poster was posted on the space reserved for the party of my acquaintances' friend. They just decided to stick the poster over the other poster when they were yelled at to just remove the poster located there and move it somewhere else and then place their own poster. The sad part was that the people who yelled at them were suporters of the rival candidate and the poster of the person they supported was actually covering the poster of my acquaintances' friend.

It's sad that we say we fight against the rotten institution that our government currently has,but then we actually promote the rotten stuff we say we are against in the college itself. And then we wonder why nothing changes in our country.

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lesser evil consolation: the worst thing that happens in UP manila is the release of flyers telling people that so-and-so is bad and blahblahblah and of course the campaign poster problem. No masked men clobbering candidates, no physical violence whatsoever.

I love weekends. On weekends I go into a world where I forget all about what happened during the week. Which explains why everytime I get back to class I always go, "Holy shit, may quiz ngayon? May paper pa nga pala no? Readings? Oh well... Fudge." Of course haphazard work would still be appreciated by the profs, but wanting to submit something good is one of the few things I'm sort of a perfectionist with. Yeah, right.
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Some people who have blogs, write their blogs very well. Every post would be a literary masterpiece, their posts actually have a point, people who read the blog go, "Oo nga, no?", and I pretty much envy them.

Most people blog and just add to the mountains of spam in internet land, mst of dem wud b usng txt lnguage lyk dis, 4get sme basic grmmr stuf, n gnrally mke me rol my eyes n groan. They'd also have mountains and mountains of other features that would make the page load in a matter of decades.

(Yes, the word mountains was pretty much overused in the above paragraph)
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I have a tendency to ramble and go of to all other kinds of points and forget all about what I was writing about. That was also my problem in my speeches in comm3. When I try to focus myself I end up trying to write like other people and I end up with crap. A few weeks ago I reviewed my blog, reading from the earliest posts to the more recent ones. I find out I apparently write in a happy manner though I always say I'm depressed. Even the depression posts seem happy. Well, except the damn emo post where I tried to write a short narrative about an idea I had. It seemed nice as a concept, I couldn't concretize it. The stuff I hated were the ones I think I focused too much. So... enough of the self-examination. I'd probably think of some lame metaphor and think too much about it again.

You know what I need? Details. I keep on going with one-liners and I expect them to zap the memory of the experience into my brain. Which reminds me... and this has nothing to do with the former statement, the end of the semester's coming and I'm once again panicking. Panic is bad since it's a bog that traps you and makes you accomplish nothing. But maybe I like panic. I might be unconsciously craving for intense emotional experiences since I don't seem to be using my emotions much.

Yup, I think I might've idolized Soujiro Seta too much.
 (anybody know where I can get stuff to cosplay as Soujiro? *Otaku moment* *Die! geek!*)

My want for more self-expression has me checking out other blog providers. I've created maybe 5 of them now. It sucks not knowing code. Or being too lazy to look for templates or learn how to create the damn stuff. So. Yeah. Uh-huh. Crappy weather we've been having.