Manila, Here I Come!

For some reason, I'm not as excited as I thought I would be. In fact, I'm quite sad. I hope this feeling goes away once I get there. I expect it should, shouldn't it?

Shit Yeah!

Finals is over baby!!!!!!! OH SNAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh I have a project to do still, crapcrapcrapcrap!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, this post is just so you know I'm not dead. Do not worry, I am fi-i-ine.

Fans

It's funny that when bloggable things happen to me I'm much too busy to write about them until long after they happen. In fact, I don't have much time now, and even though it was midterms just finished this week, I already have a shitload of homework to turn in starting Monday. Such is the life of an engineering major, I suppose. Sigh. Anyway...

This is a picture of my sister and I with Martha Wainwright.
We met her in that concert I wrote about way back in September. Seriously, I think I'm in love with Martha. She's so beautiful and sexy, just like her voice.

When you meet someone famous, you want to say something good, perhaps something profound or maybe something about how their work has touched you, anything at all that doesn't make you look like a drooling idiot fan. I wanted to say something like that, but I was so fucking starstruck that all I could say was, "Hi! Uh...um, could we get a picture?"

Oh, who cares? She held my shoulder and my arm did brush against her boob. Score!

Push-Ups

The door of our classrom, for some reason, leads right out to the street. My third-year high school religion teacher, Mr. Ines, walked through this door today, right into our engineering class. He looks a lot like Bob Dylan on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited. Above anything else, it was his resemblance to Dylan that made me respect him. But today he was acting funny.

I thought it a bit strange to give a bunch of engineering seniors a religion class, but I figured that since this was Mr. Ines giving it, it was going to be interesting. He began his lecture without much ado, asking us to name things that caused people to lose electricity and writing our answers on the board. Clearly he was somehow going to relate all this talk about losing power to Christ, so we were in for one of his unorthodoxed but fascinating classes.

Someone cited a reason for power loss I didn't hear, something to do with power plant failures. I had been distracted because Jeneva had spilled water in my area, some of which got in my bag, and I had to wipe the mess up. When I got back to my seat, I saw that what Mr. Ines had written down on the board had nothing to do with power plant failures. He had written down one word, just one long word, one I'd never seen before, a word I've already forgotten. All I remember about this word is that it begins with an A.

I turned and asked Jon, who was seated behind and to the left of me, "What did he just write?"

Jon replied, "I don't know, what is that?"

Mr. Ines was clearly not pleased with our talking. He let his last sentence trail off and added, "...because Jon isn't listening."

At this, Mr. Ines angrily stepped out of the classroom and crossed the street. It was dark out now. He took a poster that was laying on the grass on the sidewalk across the street. I couldn't see the poster very well, but it was black and, judging by red-and-yellow lettering on it, it was an ad for either an old Curtis Mayfield album or the new one by Go-Kart Mozart. He ripped the poster up, letting the shreds fall where they might. He then walked over to the middle of the street where he started to do push-ups furiously, his face contorting with the effort and his rage.

And then suddenly, my alarm went off and I awoke to the closing strains of the Pumpkins' "Today."

Fitness Made Simple

Today during geotech lab the class was performing the modified proctor test on a soil sample. This test required us to lift 44.5-newton hammer 0.46 meters repeatedly over the three hours of lab period.

Because of all the exercise we were getting from the lab, I made a snide comment that "I bought a Bowflex for nothing." The class then got into a pretty serious discussion about the merits of this particular piece of fitness equipment. Surprisingly, a good part of our class has had experience with the Bowflex and they unanimously agreed that the it was not very good. "That's because it isn't endorsed by fitness expert John Basedow," I chimed in.

We all shared a good laugh at Mr. Basedow's expense until Hume said, "He's dead, you know. He died in the Tsunami." For a while, none of us believed this to be true. When we finally accepted that it was, we all felt terrible, or at least I did, for having just made fun of Mr. Basedow, who really wasn't that bad, after all. I mean, come on, he'd made a fortune making people fit. He was noble that way, even. And his body was just to good to go to waste like that. Tsk, tsk.

Well, I just found out that fitness expert John Basedow is alive and well. Phew! It's good to know you are okay, Mr. Basedow.

Wonderfalls

I came across this great show today in between breaks from studying from my steel design midterm on monday. To ensure that this post is without pretense, I am writing it before I check what the hipsters (who are the authority, of course) have to say about the show.

I find it very funny, very oddball, and even kind of touching at times. The heroine is very beautiful too, she reminds me of someone...dear (see previous post). I think it's been cancelled (because apparently it is a law among the networks to cancel good shows, e.g. Freaks and Geeks, Eerie Indiana), and that's why I was watching it on a cable channel that is way up there on the dial.

That channel is called Logo, and I'd been noticing it recently. It's been playing a lot of good shows and has been filling some of the emptiness that was left inside of me when I lost two great channels in Trio and IFC. And then I noticed that a lot of the trailers Logo was running for their shows had a lot of guys kissing each other. It turns out that Logo is a gay, lesbian, and bi channel. Mostly gay.

Now I do not have a problem with this, but I have to admit, some of the macho alarms went off in my head. I just find it a bit odd that I'd been watching this channel for some time and didn't know that it was a gay channel. I am not a homophobe--I have gay friends, like...I can't name any right now, but they do exist. You gotsta believe me! I am very tolerant!

Rich's Sad Love Story, Part II (Oh, the Drama!)

My friend Iman (whose stuff is linked to the left) reminded me again a few weeks ago to finish my story, and so before I chicken out again...

The last time I saw her when she was still somewhat at ease with me, I told her some things that changed all that, things that, to some inexplicable extent, I still mean today. I took a break from all the work I'd been doing today to go to the shops and I was suddenly reminded of how liberating it feels to just leave and forget about responsibility for a while. I thought about her, like I still do every day, and I remembered that the last time I went out regularly was with her, and how happy that made me. I guess there's no way to sound unsentimental about all this so I'll quit while I still have some dignity left. I haven't heard her voice in ten months, haven't spoken to her properly in eleven but, wherever she is, I pray she's happy.

Concerts and Birthday Parties

Yesterday I found out that Madeleine Peyroux was playing in my school with Martha Wainwright as her support act. At the time I was so excited to buy the tickets, and then today I almost backed out because I just learned that there might be something pretty bad going on with the airbag of the Subaru. My mechanic Mr. Chen's guys couldn't fix it and they told me to go to--gasp!--the dealer, where it's going to cost me $94 just to have it diagnosed, and then repair costs shall thereafter be added. Yuck.

So earlier today I begrudgingly decided not to buy the tickets. The idea didn't sit too well with me though, and I figured if I didn't go, I'd regret it like I regret not seeing Sonic Youth or John Cale or Martha W's bro Rufus, or even Billy Corgan when he read poetry in the area recently. I changed my mind this afternoon and went to school and got the tickets. They weren't that expensive, since GW students get a huge discount, but we have to sit far so in effect we kind of don't get a discount. I'm happy I bought the tickets. I don't really get to do anything I want while school's going on, and I figure that this just might be my last concert of the year.

Today was also Sophie's second birthday. Happy Birthday, Soph! Pictures to come up pretty soon.

Sharing Time

Yes, it's sharing time once again, boys and girls. It's time to share what we have learned in school today. Let me go first:

As you all know, when an airplane flies, air pressure outside the plane is so low. As the plane keeps making trips--flying, landing, flying landing, etc, etc, the on-and-off force applied on the plane when its cabin is pressurized eventually causes little cracks and imperfections in the plane's fuselage grow little-by-little. Eventually the fuselage becomes fatigued and these little cracks get too big and a fracture occurs.

It's kind of like a balloon. There are always tiny holes on its surface that a balloon manufacturer cannot avoid. These holes are more likely to make the balloon pop when there is more air in the ballon, i.e. there is more pressure being applied on it.

The surprising thing is that the ratio of pressure on a balloon to the thickness of its surface at full inflation is greater than the ratio of cabin pressure to the thickness of the plane's walls.

I hope I haven't scared you from flying. Airlines have people to inspect things like this.

That's what I learned today. What have you learned?

Carpentry Kind of Sucks

My hands have been painful today, and, for a change, it's not due to excessive masturbation. Yes, I was master of my domain this weekend, but on Sunday I had to build three pieces of furniture--a large TV tray, a much larger kitchen island, and an even larger armoir. Driving all those screws, locking all those cams, pounding on all those nails--it can really give your hands a hard time the day after. I will not even mention how my back felt on Sunday after all that lifting that came with all that assembly.

The rest of my body hurts too, thanks not only to all that large-furniture-building but also to having classes so far away from each other. It's so strange to have all my classes spread out around campus while there are so many non-engineering classes going on in the engineering building. Bit unfair, that. So earlier today some of us CE seniors were at one of our apartments working on our Environmental Engineering homework. It felt like this guy's place was at the opposite end of DC from where class was. We were walking briskly in the sweltering heat for around twenty minutes. Then of course we had to walk back after class, and then I took the early bus home which meant I had to walk another twenty minutes from the bus stop to the house, mostly uphill. Yes some exercise is good but youch it hurts sometimes. Fortunately, all my 'work' for the past two days has been tempered with utter slacking this afternoon.

The 21-Year-Old Virgin

I watched the 40-Year-Old Virgin today, and I liked it. It was silly and heartwarming at the same time, and while it would be easy to ridicule the title character throughout the film, the writers, thank God, refrained from doing so and were sympathetic to him. I'm not sure why, but sometime during the movie I was reminded of Rushmore, and that can never be bad. Anyway, it was a great movie, as one might expect from the people behind Freaks and Geeks.

I was very pleasantly surprised to say the least to see Catherine Keener in the flick. Let me right now declare my undying love for the beautiful Ms. Keener.

*Sigh* Ms. Keener, I salute you!

Dusting the Shelves

I was looking at my first few posts on this blog and I realized that since I somewhat recently changed my template and had to re-add Haloscan, all the old comments have been lost. I'm saddened to learn that I can't look back on the witty comments friends have left about my not-so-witty entries.

If anyone knows how to recover that stuff, holla back.

The Early Morning Phone Call

I had a dream at 1:30 this morning. I can't remember what my dream was, but a phone was ringing in it. Just as in the movies, I awoke with a start when I discovered that the phone was really ringing. Because I initially mistook the ringing phone as part of my dream, about a minute had passed before I got to it. When I lifted the receiver, the mystery caller had decided to hang up.

Obviously, this kind of call is disconcerting because whatever reason the caller had for, well, calling, it could not wait until morning. As such, a call of this--er--temporal nature is almost always, at least in my experience, an emergency of some sort.

I immediately thought of the parents, who are the only ones, I imagine, that would call here if there was an emergency of some sort. Thankfully everything was fine in Manila. So I went back to bed, where I wondered about the mystery caller. Who could he be? Was his call as important as I'd imagined? Had someone gotten hurt? Died? Was it all a prank? It was bothering me. I couldn't sleep. The tick-tick-ticking of the clock had become as loud as the footsteps of an Apatosaurus. I said a prayer and eventually fell asleep. I found out in the morning that it was, of course, nothing.

The Blog as Shrink

I'm depressed now and I'm not quite sure why that is. I suppose it's because many things are going on at the same time. None of these things is particularly terrible and while even my rational side keeps telling its irrational counterpart that there is nothing to worry about, it is this irrational counterpart that is winning out, like it always does.

So here's what has to be done over the next few days:
1. The front struts of my car are leaking and need to be replaced: $500
2. I need to order a glove compartment for the SL to be sent to Manila: $300
3. Some of the house is being painted: $1,900
4. Finding the source of my current depression: Priceless

That's why I'm so fucking depressed! Family funds, wherever they are coming from, are being reduced by $2,700--let's say $3,000 including unforseen expenditures--that's over P150,000! Sonofabitch! It's not like we're going poor, but shit, that is a lot of money!

It's been said before that whoever said that money couldn't buy happiness was a poor person. That's only half-right. Whoever said that was also an idiot. If I was wealthy I certainly wouldn't be depressed and I certainly wouldn't be worrying about three grand. Let's go visit Bill Gates in his $97M mansion by Lake Washington and see what a friggin' sad sack he is.

But that's not all of what's getting to me right now. There is also the matter of time to deal with, time as in the utter lack thereof. School begins on Wednesday. That's cool. Two days to do the following:

1. Fix up the kitchen - done Sunday night
2. Vacuum and shampoo living room carpet - Monday
3. Arrange all displaced furniture of living room - Monday, after carpet cleaning of course
4. Get struts fixed - Monday or Tuesday or Friday for 3 hours
5. Go to Mercedes dealer in Silver Spring to see about glove box - Monday, from 1 to 1.5 hours

To top it all of, I sent my academic advisor an email last thursday hoping to meet with him either the friday just passed or on Monday, which if he replies (he hasn't yet) yes to will mean I have to go to GW in DC and meet with him ASAP and that is NGTBGM (not going to be good, man). This is the first time I've ever hoped to be turned down by a professor.

It's not like I have to do all this on my own. I have help as far as getting the house in order is concerned, but with the daycare in the house we have to work around that too.

I know I'm making too much out of this and I seem to be the only one in the house worried about all this. I just dislike responsibility. I always do what I must, but I don't like doing it a lot of the time. When one grows up in an upper-class family in the Philippines, as I did, one doesn't need to do much. There were always people to do things for me, and things are never as expensive nor the rules ever as stirct as they are here in America. But here in the States, I'm far from upper class. The Peso is so weak and doesn't amount to much. The cost of things here may not be much for a Dollar-earner but is very prohibitive for those who earn in Philippine Pesos. I have to do things for myself now, and by myself, too. I like to think that I have so much more to do than the average well-to-do Filipino college student, who, it seems to me, barring any degenerate behavior, need not worry about much more than his grades. I've gotten used to it over the years, but I still get overwhelmed, and I still get depressed, that's all.

Now That's Love

My niece Sophie, who loves, among other things, swimming, turns two on Septmeber 23rd and has yet to be potty-trained. She'd just arrived from the community pool earlier today when she entered my room while I was singing the Go-Betweens' 1979 non-hit first single "Lee Remick" while accompanying myself on guitar. I was strumming my way to the end of the tune when she began to pee on my floor.

"Aaaay! Umiihi si Soph!"* I cried, ever the macho one.

After she finished, she was whisked away to the shower. I, on the other hand, was left to pat my carpet dry, pushing what added up to ten sheets of paper towels into the carpet with my fists.

The stranger thing about all this? I didn't mind doing it at all.


* "Aaaay! Soph is peeing!"

the back pages of ulysses

today i went to gwu to pay my tuition and get the info i need about my books so i can get them online cheaper. during this time i met manang fely (i think that is her name), a nice old pinay working in the scholarship department of gw whom i visit every semester, even though i don't need to. actually, i can't remember what it was that brought me to her office, but anyway now i have a friend of sorts outside the engineering department. we talked for a bit and then we said good-bye, that was it.
i also decided to stop by the tower records that is in a little shopping complex on-campus, just across the building we call the marvin center, the marvin center being the place that houses both the bookstore and the cafeteria. I decided to go to tower to see whether they had that new orange juice compilation ('the glasgow school') i scored in sydney a few weeks ago for a staggering au$32+. cd's are very expensive in australia so i was expecting to find out today that i'd paid way too much for 'the glasgow school.' my only faint hope was that there would not be any orange juice stuff here in the us, just as there hadn't been for the better part of two years that i'd been looking, this being the very reason i did not hesitate to buy the album in sydney. of course as my luck would have it they did have 'the glasgow school' at tower, and for us$13+. this means that if i had waited a scant two weeks, i would have saved meself, oh, about ten dollars. now, i consider this music priceless, so i still think the au$32 was not that bad a price, but what angers me about the situation here with tower is that they would not have this album--or at least at such a bargain price--if it were not released by current hot property franzfuckingferdinand's label (domino), nor would they have advertised it in the goddamn washington city paper. i did not let this little annoyance bother me enough to stop looking aroound, and as i was rummaging through the shelves i saw the subway sect singles anthology and one of the go kart mozart albums I'd planned to buy in sydney but just could not find there. so i grabbed them and promptly and remorsefully phoned my sister to tell her sadly that i was, for a moment, shamefully prodigal when i could not quite afford to be so. i also picked up a copy of the city paper on my way out.
i read that paper for the whole train ride to glenmont, and i read it also for the bus ride from glenmont to my suburb, olney. at the bus i was reading, of all things, the personals. i have written before about my interest in personals, not to look for a date but just the romanticism in the belief in finding love in so crass a manner. the particular kind of personal i like to read in the city paper is the 'i saw you' personal, where one person puts up an ad, hoping that the person he/she made brief eye contact with on the train, supermarket, etc, feels the same way about him/her and reads the city paper personals, particularly the 'i saw you' section. now, the funny part about all this is that in my rapture i did not notice the huge header reading 'personals,' plain for any passenger in my perimeter to see and reasonably conclude that i am a sad, lonely boy a-lookin' for love. so the bus got me to olney and i asked my aunt to drop me home where nothing really happened afterwards.
i did however, bake muffins for the kids in the daycare and they really liked it.

Talk Talk Talk

There's the Midnight Madness sale once again at Ayala center. Just a few years stateside and already I'd forgotten about that tradition. I never did look forward to it, and I always avoided the mall during Midnight Madness because of the hordes of people it attracts and because my comic books and CDs were never on sale anyway. Today I did find, however, a nice collection of all of Jane Austen's novels for P460-something, which for me is well worth it.

I went to the Mercedes dealer in the Fort to inquire about the final part we need to put the SL together. Turns out all our searching through third-party dealers was in vain. The Mercedes people can get us pretty much any part we might require. Doesn't come cheap though, over P15,000 for the glove compartment. That's one expensive box.

Some less self-centered developments: The IRA decided to dump their arms yesterday, which may very well lead to peace in Northern Ireland and the rest of that region up and over there. While I too am skeptical about how long this is going to last and if everyone in the army is on board from this, I sure hope it lasts. The world needs as much peace as it can get and I am very happy about this even though it doesn't affect me at all. I do hope the Middle East is next.

Tintin Fest

There was a Tintin festival in Belgium last week. How I wish I could have gone. They even have this huge mural on the side of a building of Tintin going down some stairs with Snowy and Capt. Haddock.

I first saw my sister's copy of Tintin in America when I was about eight and I've loved Tintin ever since. Herge was a genius.

I guess that's it for now. Just a bit bored, sorry.

Civic Duty

Today was an important day for the Philippines. Recently, the country has been a political mess, and today our president gave her state of the nation address to tell us citizens how big the mess is. I did my part. I watched The Island.

I didn't expect much from it since it was a summer blockbuster, and I expected less since it was a Michael Bay film. But it was all right. And even if it wasn't, it acually wouldn't be what it wasn't, that is, it would not be not all right, by which i mean it wouldn't be not but rather would be, or it wouldn't be that it wouldn't be all right since Scarlett Johansson is in it, and her mere presence in any film would assure that it could not possibly could not be good.

The greatest actor ever, Steve Buscemi, is in it too, so I bet my buddy that he was going to die in the movie. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who wants to watch it, so anyone curious but not quite enough so to watch it can ask me if I won the bet.

-----------------------------

On a totally different note, my recent acquisitions:




























































































All great stuff. Worry not, fellow pop fiends, I still love the pop, and recently acquired one of the greatest albums of all time, after years of searching:


















Viva la musica pop!

Decisions, Decisions

Every man comes to a crossroads in his life, a point at which he must make a decision, one that will affect his life forever. I have reached that point.

I am going to Australia next week and have to decide which records I want to buy. CDs aren't cheap in OZ, so I have to choose carefully. Here's the tentative list:

1. The entire Orange Juice catalog - 3 albums
2. The entire Denim catalog - 3 albums
3. The entire(?) Felt catalog - 10 albums
4. The entire Go-Kart Mozart catalog - 2 albums
6. A Subway Sect anthology
5. Serge Gainsbourg - Comic Strip and Coleur Cafe

I have six days to find a used record shop where I can maybe get all this stuff cheap. Otherwise, that's a lot of money I don't have to spend on records. No one said that pristine pop perfection was cheap. Maybe I'll get lucky and find some Go-Betweens records as well, maybe some Postcard singles, I dunno. Maybe early Richman Beserkeley stuff. So many choices! Sometimes I wish I was born in England so that I could've had these records a long time ago. Oh well.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

My regular readers (all three of you) may notice the new look of my blog which, in Spanish, is mi blog. I just thought the old look was kind of boring. I was thinking of migrating to Live Journal since I noticed that a lot of the blogs I see on there are so nice-looking and have that "currently listening" space before each entry. But Blogger and I have had such good times together (I remember once we both got so shit-faced and fell asleep on a sidewalk) so I decided I'd just change the look of my blog. I'll try to do something about that "currently listening" thing so that you all will know how impeccable my taste is. I will add the Haloscan comments shortly after this.

I recently and intermittently watched Diary of a Mad Black Woman on Oprah's urging--don't we all just love her?--and was disappointed. It wasn't as funny as Oprah had said.

I don't think that the "Mad Black Woman"'s actions were specific to her race at all. I think that the title and the characters' propensity to refer to themselves and each other as black people only serves to alienate non-blacks. The title "Diary of a Mad Woman" would have been more appropriate in my opinion. While itt is true that all races have different experiences, and that there are some things that are special to any one race that others cannot relate to, the themes of this movie were universal.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Fun with Blogs

Mine isn't as funny as Joe's.

Joseph Camacho Reyes's Aliases

Your movie star name: Cheese Fidel

Your fashion designer name is Joseph Warsaw

Your socialite name is Tikboy Tel Aviv

Your fly girl / guy name is J Rey

Your detective name is Rabbit La Salle

Your barfly name is Frozen Beer Beer

Your soap opera name is Camacho Santolan

Your rock star name is Butterball Earth

Your star wars name is Josroc Reymic

Your punk rock band name is The Bored Fax Machine

The Amazing Meganame Generator

Recent Developments

1. My mom just had her hysterectomy. She's back home and she's doing fine. Phew.

2. I am going to Australia before I go back to the States and back to school. I will be flying on my mileage. Sweet! More economy class savaging! But seriously, folks, this is one trip I'm looking forward to.

That's it for the updates. Quite the simple life I live, no? That will be fixed when school starts. Can't wait! GROAN.

Oh I updated my Friendster profile today. I know how silly that is but I realized that my profile was much too vague to be of any use to anyone I don't already know. I wouldn't normally care about this but recently I got two messages from two cuties just moved in to the DC/Maryland area trying to meet new people. Barring the possibilty of them being men, they did presume some compatibilty based on what little information I'd provided. Here's what my profile read:

Favorite Books: comedies
Favorite Movies: comedies
Favorite Music: pop
Favorite Television Shows: comedies

I've elaborated on those now, but had a very hard time with the favorite music bit. To name a few musicians I always listen to would be leaving out so many, and to list them all would be overkill. Sometimes people put so many names down that I wonder if all of them are their favorites. Could it be they merely like a lot of them? Have they heard everything by those guys? Isn't it possible that their genius was limited to one album? One song even? Or are these people just showing off? Do they want to show off how much they know, or how esoteric the people they like are? Are they trying to tell you, "Yeah, I'm a trainspotter, my music is a lot cooler--a lot more unknown--than yours"?

So I decided to list genres I listen to (even though I usually call everything that isn't 'jazz' or 'classical' 'pop'), that way I didn't leave anyone out and I wasn't showing off either. But--in the refuge of this blog--my favorite music? A field recording of a tribe from the northern Philippines. I have the only reel in existence. Hell, I made it myself. Take that, assholes.

Poses

I had a party Saturday night and Luis brought his friend Mildred. Mildred was quite a character. She was quite attractive; a little skinny, yes, but one got the impression that she did not have trouble making friends and/or boyfriends.

I like jazz, although I'm not quite sure how much I like it, if you get my meaning. I guess a true jazz afficionado would tell me pointedly that I "like all the obvious stuff." Nevertheless Mark and I talked a little about jazz Saturday night. I told him about John Coltrane's rendition of "My Favorite Things" and about the documentary I saw where Wynton Marsalis said that "My Favorite Things" with its blue cover was the record that got him interested in jazz. A few minutes into the song, Mark agreed that this was indeed a great record.
"Hey, Rich, who is this?" It was Mildred speaking.
"John Coltrane," I said.
"John Coltrane?" she replied. "My friend shook the hand of John Coltrane! He was like, 'J-J-John C-C-Coltrane!'" she said, tremulously shaking an invisible hand.
"Wow, that's so cool!" I said.
Joe incredulously replied, "Haven't a million people shaken his hand?" Leave it to Joe to make an awkward situation even more so.
I pulled Joe aside and whispered, "Dude, Coltrane's been dead for a really long time." 38 years, to be exact.

While this little conversation was to me the most glaring example of Mildred's posing, it was not all she had to offer for the night. Next to the bar hung a piece painted in the style of van Gogh, of whose work my father is a great admirer. She asked me about it.
"Hey, Rich," she began, "is that a copy of a van Gogh?"
Joe's eyes were already rolling, but I plodded on. "I think it's just made in his style," I said. "My dad's a big fan of his. He's become really into paintings recently."
"You mean it wasn't your mom who bought all these paintings? Is your dad a fag?" Joe again.
"Do you mind if I have a look?" Mildred politely asked.
"No, not at all."
After a few minutes of examining the painting she came back. "Is it a copy?" I asked, genuinely curious myself. I'd always assumed it was just done in van Gogh's style, although now I wasn't so sure. "I don't think he painted anything like that."
"It's a copy," Mildred corrected me. "He made one of those. Irises."
I later asked my dad about the painting, and he said that it was only done in van Gogh's style and wasn't actually a copy.

Mildred's last faux pas was very forgivable to me, but for a gourmet like Joe it was totally unacceptable. She tried some of the dessert Chino brought.
"Rich, are these cinnamon sticks?" she asked.
"No, they aren't. I don't know what they are. Chino brought them and we've been trying to remember what they're called."
Later on Joe, visibly chagrined, complained that "There isn't even a hint of cinnamon here."

In retrospect, Joe and I were too cruel to this sweet girl, whether she was aware of it or not. I'm willing to believe that she has a friend who is at least twice her twenty-two years who did get to shake John Coltrane's hand. The van Gogh mistake was most likely honest. And maybe she's had cinnamon sticks that don't taste much like cinnamon. I should have asked for her number. She was cute, and I felt she was flirting with me, although she probably wasn't. I bet she thinks Joe and I are a pair of queens.

Today I...

Today I saw Sin City it was very good and reminded me of the comics, which I was really into in high school. The dialogue kind of sounded funy to me. The words are way cooler in print than on the screen. The Philippine censors totally butchered the film, and still it was pretty damn violent, and some people actually walked out of the cinema. I didn't mind the censors cutting the gory stuff because I'm not too into that but I was kind of disappointed that they cut the nudity. I guess that makes me a pervert, but I mean, come on, the name of the movie is Sin City. Plus that was one of the many things that made me love the books as an adolescent.

There were two obnoxious fuckers, a girl and a guy, talking really fucking loud and that pissed me off so I went out and had the security guard kick them out of the theater. That was uncharacteristically assertive of me and I was proud of myself. Apparently these two people had been in the theater all day just making noise and I wasn't the first to complain about them. For the rest of the movie I kept worrying in the back of my mind that the dude was going to come back and stab me or at least give me a good beating. He didn't.

Tonight I watched the news. There is a scandal going on regarding illegal gambling and politicians close to the president are allegedly taking cuts. Now this is undoubtedly true, and it's funny and sad at the same time to see stupid politicians talk about it among themselves and with stupid newspeople. I end up shouting profanities and insults at the tv in my rage. None of these people love our country. They only love themselves, the bastards.

Rich's Helpful Tip of the Day

Helping you navigate the tempestuous waters of life one hint at a time

When working on an email chain letter, put your favorite number down as 1, even though it isn't.

Yes!

My visa application was accepted! I shall be continuing my education at GWU! Hooray!

At Last!

Episode III didn't suck! Hooray!

Grades are good! Hooray!

Got an mp3 player! Finally! Hooray!

I sure hope they renew my visa. Pray for me! Cross your fingers! PleasePleasePleasePleasePleasePleasePleasePleasePleasePleasePlease.....

About Bad Luck

Let me try this again.

In my last post I allude to bad luck that's befallen me in the past week. Earlier yesterday, I had typed up an entry detailing this but Blogger was under maintenance and when I tried to post it I just lost everything I'd typed. But I do suppose it's a little unfair to mention my bad luck and not go any further into it, especially since my entries aren't very exciting to begin with. So here it is.

The time: 2200 hours. The date: 12 May 2005. It is the eve of the last final exam I have to take for the semester. I have only just begun to study for it. I am oh so tired and decide to sleep now and wake up very early to study. I set my alarm. I overshoot 0300 by one minute and since I am not so anal as to go round the clock sixty minutes, I leave my alarm set at 0301.

The time: 0301 hours. The date: 13 May 2005. My alarm goes off and fills the room with whatever dreadful stuff the local rock station plays at this ungodly hour. I turn it off and think, 'five more minutes.' I close my eyes. I open them again.

The date: 13 May 2005. The time. 0555 hours. The five extra minutes I decided to sleep some more for turns out to be an extra two hours and fifty-four minutes. Shit. I pretty much haven't studied yet, and my exam is at 1040. I am screwed. So I study faster than I've ever studied before. I shit twice(!) and get some more studying done. I stuff a banana and a box of Wheat Thins in my bag and at 0700 my sister and I are off. Thirty minutes later she drops me of at the metro station, as she does every morning, and leaces to go to work. I walk towards the turnstile, reach for my wallet for my farecard. I don't have my wallet on me. Shit. I call my sister but of course--as is typical of a situation like this--she didn't bring her phone. I start to panic. I may miss my exam, the one I'm about to fail anyway. I call all my friends who live in the area. Enrique. No answer. Shai. No answer. Mamoudou. He answers, and just like Superman in 30 minutes he is here and hands me twenty dollars. He is my my savior, and I will be sure to take him to lunch before I leave.

So that's my horror story of yesterday, I guess. It turns out I didn't do so badly on the final, at least I don't think so. I just did what made sense to me, and it turns out that what I did on the test the other kids did too, and they knew what they were doing. So I guess it all turned out okay. Phew.

School's Out

Yes, school is out. Finals week is over, and it wasn't that bad, despite all the bad luck I've had this week in things not directly pertinent to school. I'm not sure to pass all my classes, but for some reason that doesn't worry me too much. Maybe tomorrow it will sink in.

I am going home! Yes, I will spend my summer break in comfortable old Manila and right now I just cannot wait! But I will really miss my niece Sophie :'(

I guess that's it for now....Rich....out...

Super....cheesy....ending

Mondays...

Ah...What a shitty day. Flat tire, etc. Ayayayayay.

Pictures

Some Celebration III photos are up, and can be found on the link to the left. I'll be putting more up soon, but now I want to sleep. It's kind of hard coming up with good captions. I was struggling with a lot of them, and I apologize if some aren't funny. I'll write about what went on in that crazy convention later on as well. Cheerio for now

Oh Yeah, I Forgot...

...the Go-Betweens' new album came out this week in England I think it was and probably Australia too and other parts of the globe except for America, where it comes out I believe on 05 May presumably because Americans have poor taste ;p

Anyone who likes pop music must get this album, whether they've heard of the Go-Betweens or not. I will personally reimburse anyone who buys the album because of me and doesn't like it however many dollhairs they paid for it. This is not a shameless plug for ol' Robert and Grant. I just want my pals (that's you!) to hear some really, really, really good music.

I had time to write the Star Wars Convention (henceforth Celebration III or C3) today but I was just too fuckin' lazy, man. In the weekend, in the weekend. Finally, my blog will have pictures and something to talk about! I'm sooo excited! :D

A Little Disclaimer

In case some incidental readers are not familiar with figures of speech, that part above about reimbursing you IS A JOKE. I won't actually pay you, not even in dollhairs, so don't try it. Nevertheless you should still go get the album. I'll pay you back if you don't like it.

Yet Another Disclaimer

The above paragraph IS A JOKE TOO.

Get it now! The Go-Betweens - Oceans Apart!

Hallelujah!

Finally I learned how to put links up! Now if only I had friends who I can link to my blog :(

A Quick One

I was doing some boring water quality homework and I typed this up, which I thought was funny:

"5-11) The health risk of ingesting too much nitrate in drinking water is infant methemoglobinemia. Methemoglobinemia causes cyanosis, which gives the baby a blue color. This stems from nitrite that is absorbed by the blood after developing from nitrate in the child’s intestine. It is, however, readily diagnosed and quickly treated.

"5-13) The five trihalomethane compounds that have been found in water are chloroform (CHCl₃), bromodichloromethane (CHCl₂Br), dibromochloromethane (CHClBr₂), bromoform (CHBr₃, and dichloroiodomethane (CHCl₂I). These are produced in surface waters as a by-product of chlorination, when the chlorine interacts with organic substances present in the raw water."

Just so we're clear, I didn't find the sick baby funny, just the big words (hopefully you don't think me that sinister). As you can imagine, my spell checker had the time of its life.

Also, I was in Indianapolis all last weekend for the Celebration III Star Wars convention. I had a blast, and I will write a long post about that, with pictures and all, hopefully this weekend if I have time. I guess you already knew I was a geek. If you didn't, don't laugh. Star Wars geeks are some of the nicest people you can ever hope to meet.

The Personals

I was looking at the personal ads for my area earlier. I'm not looking for a girl. And although I think I kind of need one and in truth I do kind of want one as well, there's no time for love, Doctor Jones, at least not right now. Nevertheless, I was looking at the personals.

I find personals fascinating. I get a sad feeling when I see how many lonely people there are out there, but I also get a happy feeling when I realize that these people are Romantics, and no matter how much they know that the world is a shithole, they still believe that someday their princes or princesses will come.

Another aspect of these ads I find interesting is how attractive a lot of these people are. There are so many beautiful people in the personals They all seem smart and personable too, and that really makes me wonder why they are alone. Are they anti-social? Are they just terribly shy? Or are they, in reality, assholes?

A lot of them are middle-aged divorcees, single parents, etc looking to get back on 'the scene' while the younger ones, particularly the girls, are either tired of jerks or people interested only in sex (give it up ladies, a good guy is a figment of the imagination). I doubt many of them--indeed many of us--will ever find 'the one', but I still hope we all find what we're looking for. And ladies if you're interested, you can always leave me a comment on this blog. Seriously.

Pop!

Gawd I lurve pop music. Iloveitiloveitiloveitiloveit. I was at the record store today and I got me some Ray Charles and a Beserkley sampler. Ah pop music. Iloveitiloveitiloveitiloveit. Pop pop pop pop pop pop pop popopopopopopopopopopopop POP!

Time for Another Ruminations of a Dolt

The apartment my friend Andrea used to live in is now called "The Fitz".

I'm Bored so I will do This Thing I Got from My Cousin's Blog

1. WHAT IS YOUR FULL NAME?


2. WHAT COLOR PANTS ARE YOU WEARING?
plaid boxers

3. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
I just listened to my copy of rubber soul to see whether it really was broken or not. It's broken, alas.

4. THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
a grape

5. DO YOU WISH ON STARS?
no. actually yes. no. really, no.

6. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
white--no one ever uses the white crayon.

7. HOW IS THE WEATHER RIGHT NOW?
bit cold but better than a few weeks ago

8. WHO IS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED ON THE PHONE?
my sister

9. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT YOU THIS?
that's an emphatic yes!

10. HOW OLD ARE YOU TODAY?
20.

11. FAVORITE DRINK?
water. if you don't drink it, you'll like die

12. HAIR COLOR?
if you look carefully it's actually brown

13. M&M's OR REESE'S PIECES?
dead even

14. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
no

15. SIBLINGS?
one older sister

16 FAVORITE MONTH?
the ones when school's out

17. FAVORITE FOOD?
you can never go wrong with some dimsum-m-m

18. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
probably something i happened upon on tv. but one i meant to watch? i think it was kieslowski's 'blanc'

19. FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR?
feb 29

20. WHAT DO YOU DO TO VENT ANGER?
masturbate. actually, that's my answer to everything.

21. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TOY AS A CHILD?
the ninja turtles' blimp was pretty rad

22. SUMMER OR WINTER?
summer. always summer. i loathe snow

23. HUGS OR KISSES?
hugs AND kisses for me!

24. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA?
chocolate AND vanilla for me!

25. DO YOU WANT YOUR FRIENDS TO DO THIS QUIZ AS WELL?
those who blog already did

26. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO TAKE THIS?
no one i know. it's too late

27. WHO IS LEAST LIKELY TO?
these questions are getting dumber and more unanswerable as they go on

28. LIVING ARRANGEMENTS?
with the family in waspville, usa

29. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
I'm a man. Men don't cry.

Every night, before i sleep

30. WHAT IS UNDER YOUR BED?
a copy of the silmarillion i will probably never finish

31. WHO IS THE FRIEND YOU HAVE HAD THE LONGEST?
Brett but I think he got pissed at me ever since i started asking my for my cd's back from him and didnt want to give him my beck cd. plus it's kind of hard keeping in touch. so with that, i guess it's joe. he never reads this blog even though i tell him to

32. WHAT DID YOU DO LAST NIGHT?
weird. my friend enrique called me out of the blue to ask to use my internet. so he did java while i did structures while listening to star wars. then we watched some porn. male-bonding thing, you know

33. FAVORITE SMELLS?
some burberry perfume that a former friend used (still does, perhaps?). It made me know the meaning of bittersweet.

34. WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
Lurve. I'm so gay

35. WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
Sudden loud noises. You should have seen me when my dad tried to make me shoot a gun. I'm sure he's never forgiven me for the shame i caused him that day

36. PLAIN, BUTTERED OR SALTED POPCORN?
Once when we were kids my cousin and I finished half a bucket of barbecue-flavored (we pinoys are very creative with our popcorn) between ourselves and ever since I don't touch the stuff.

37. FAVORITE CAR?
Those that don't run on petroleum, which i'm afraid to say i myself don't drive. but if you own a hummer, never talk to me, you inconsiderate little person. shame on you.

38. FAVORITE FLOWER?
orchids are nice

39. NUMBER OF KEYS ON YOUR KEY RING?
four, including one that has absolutely no purpose except opening parcels

40. CAN YOU JUGGLE?
two things is my max

41. FAVORITE DAY OF THE WEEK?
fridays have been kind to me so far

42. WHAT DID YOU DO ON YOUR LAST BIRTHDAY?
i had a final and then had some mongolian barbecue with my buds. then we went to the house and watched the real cancun. that movie is so bad. don't watch it ever, not even for the tits. seriously, you're better off using your imagination.

43. HOW MANY STATES HAVE YOU LIVED IN?
The philippines and maryland make three.

44. WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Manila, Philippines

45. WHAT'S WITH YOUR SCREENNAME?
I know, right? It's like so uncreative. It's just my name.

More Ruminations of a Dolt

I find it a funny sight: a wealthy DC kid with his bottled water wearing a Che Guevara shirt and anti-capitalist slogans stuck to his backpack. Doesn't he know that without his abhorred capitalism his daddy probably couldn't afford to buy him his fashionably rebellious t-shirt? Try drinking tap water you hypocrite.

Goodbye, John Paul II

Dziękują za stworzenie różnicy. Reszta w pokoju.

Someone Who Knows a Lot about Cars, Please

Okay, I was driving home with my sister and I jumped a kerb (i.e. a "curb") while going around thirty mph. The kerb wasn't high, but we felt it all right. Right after the incident we thought we heard some clicking sounds coming from the vicinity of the wheel. So I pulled over and we inspected the area around the wheel in question, and nothing looked wrong. The car drives the way it normally does and the alignment is okay as well. The sounds seemed to stop immediately, and in hindsight people always start noticing noises when something bad happens even if those noises were there before the incident. And it's possible that the sounds weren't coming from the wheel at all. The car brakes fine too.

The thing is, I'm still worried about it. I will be taking it on the highway tomorrow to see if anything is wrong with it at speeds above 45 mph. So anyone reading this who knows about cars, should I be worried? Please let me know, anyone.

Ruminations of a Dolt

Is it more tech-savvy to refer to a computer as a "machine"? I'd just entered the conference room of the engineering building that had two computers, both of which were being used. The girl on one of them was like, "Do you need to use this machine?" I think people say it to sound smart but to me it kind of sounds pretentious.

The Pope is My Idol

It's probably all the religious programming of Holy Week talking. I was watching a documentary about JP II's influence in the world, you know, what he's done and how he's made a difference and so forth. Man, he did a lot, and he's a swell guy and I just love him and that doc almost made me cry.

I have been very worried about his health lately, and had already been worried about who his replacement is going to be but after seeing this show now I'm really worried. I mean, how on earth can anyone make as big a difference as he did? Can anyone replace him? I really, really do hope so. I don't know what to say.

I think it's time I started going to mass again. I'm coming, Jesus!

A Sad, Sad Day

The Pacman lost. Manny Pacquiao lost to Erik Morales in 12 rounds, 115-113. Shit.

The Fanboy Strikes Back

I went to the Smithsonian yesterday to hear Frank Miller, among others, talk about comics, specifically the graphic novel, which has become very vogue lately. Personally, I think it's weird that regular people are getting into comics, you know, the way that suddenly "underground" comics are cool. I think it's just a morbid fascination with us Homo-sapiens-fanboys (more commonly called by our sub-species fanboys) that causes critics in reputable magazines like Time to write about comics seriously and not as the medium of choice for youngsters and socially inept adults like me.

Actually I kid. While the comics world has its fair share of weirdos, the majority of its population is normal, socially-functioning people, like in Chasing Amy.

Anyway, you can't possibly imagine how excited I was to see Frank. I mean, come on! FrankfuckingMiller! YEAH! You see, Frank Miller is one of my heroes. I was so happy just thinking about hearing him talk. I was about to add him to my list of heroes I've seen in person, up there with Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. If you think I'm kind of overdoing it for a mere comics dude then you most certainly haven't read The Dark Knight Returns, and you should.

So I get there, and I see this leaflet:

"THE GRAPHIC NOVEL
Sunday, March 13, 2 p.m.
Meyer Auditorium

"We want you to be aware that because of a sudden illness Frank Miller is unable to join us today. We are pleased that the program is proceeding with Terry Nantier, Paul Pope and Calvin Reid..."

GRAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!! HULK SMASH!!!!!! NO FRANK??? NO FRANK!!! Frank! FRANK!! FRAAAANK!!!

But then I was there already. It took me a while to get there, and to have just gone home empty handed would've been even more unfulfilling. Besides, even though Frank wasn't there, I thought it might still be interesting. There were a number of very interesting parts but I have to admit I was yawning a lot. And just to add, Paul Pope's stuff looks good and I plan on checking it out in the near future. Terry Nantier is owns NBM Publishing, and they are the American publishers of a lot of really cool European stuff that I really like. Calvin Reid is a critic for Publisher's Weekly. Chatty fellow, that Reid.

I was a little pissed of that they hardly showed any pictures, though. Come on guys, we're talking about comics here. If we didn't want pictures, we'd read a real book.

Spuh-ring Buh-reak

Spring break is here! Woohoo! I have three midterms to go back to! Woohoo!

Click. BLAM

The Wrath of Khalid

That's right. One of my professors totally busted me doing homework during class and was all, "Please put that away. You are really disrespecting the subject matter when you do that. You can step outside and do that."

All right, fuckface. This is war.

My Niece

My niece, Sophie, is sick. She has an ear infection and has to take antibiotics. She is in high spirits though, and hopefully she will be good as new in no time. I should put a picture of her on here one of these days.

I Rode the Bus Today -or- My Message of Love

To all the dear, spoiled, whiny passengers on the bus today--especially the middle-aged mustachioed cheeseball weirdo with the scooter, wristguards and blackberry, as well as the bearded pseudo-VIP misanthrope--dicks.

Goodbye Cruel Blogosphere

...At least for now.

I've been wasting way too much time on the net and this is not very good, so I will disconnect my wireless card and access the internet only when it is absolutely necessary for me to do so.

"But Rich! What about your scintillating love story???" Do not fret, dear readers, spring break is nigh and I will probably continue my tale then.

I'll try to post whenever there is good reason to do so.

Please, do not be sad. I know it is as hard for you as it is for me.

Rich's Sad Love Story, Part I

Earlier I promised you, my many faithful, avid, and beloved readers, that I would bring you drama, and I am here to deliver. It's a pretty long story, so I'm going to be typing it in installments. It will probably sound stupid to everyone, but I could never say enough how much the following events mean to me. I hope you enjoy it, or at least get a good laugh out of it. I will probably sound like one of those psychopathic bloggers after this. Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not. If it'll help, I guess you could think of this as a work of fiction. I doubt anyone, even my friends, cares about all this, but humor me anyway. Thanks.


It has been a year to the day since I first fell in love.

It is exactly this time one year ago. It is 10:30 pm on the 26th of February, 2004. It is a Thursday, not a Saturday, and I am exactly where I want to be: seated next to the woman I love in her piece-of-shit 80's Ford Escort in the empty parking lot of our college. We have been here for the past half-an-hour or so, and we will be here for another two. We are not making out, we are not doing the nasty, we are just talking and laughing, talking and laughing about the ordinary things and the ordinary people that constitute our ordinary lives, yet to us--well, to me at least--this is anything but ordinary. This is the happiest night I have yet to know, perhaps the happiest night I will ever know. The planets are in perfect alignment tonight. All is right in the universe. It is cold outside but the car is warm. It is very late and I have school in the morning, but that doesn't matter to me anymore. Few things do. I am here seated next to the most beautiful woman on earth.

You may ask yourself how I--with my near-sociopathic tendencies and all--have gotten here, alone with this beautiful, tall, sexy, horn-honk-inducing (yes, that really happened) goddess. That is a little story in itself.

We first met about five-and-a-half months ago, in the beginning of September 2003. We had both just started working at the bookstore of our school. Our eyes kept meeting each other from across the room. I thought she was a customer but then she had been there much too long and later on she was chatting with us, her fellow employees. She is tall and striking, and all the other guys at work were obviously all physically attracted to her, you know, flirting like crazy with her and all. I wasn't so much, but I did think she was very friendly and we got along and I liked her as a friend. In the next few days, I could see that she was friendliest with me. She was always talking to me and hanging around me, and I started to feel that there might be something more than just friendship between us. So I asked her out to a jazz festival. She was polite and showed what seemed to be genuine interest and told me she wanted to go, but she was a runner and had a busy training schedule. I assumed I'd misread her and that she wasn't interested in me at all that way.

We were still close though, the closest among anyone else at work. She always showed interest in me. She asked me how the jazz festival went--I told her I'd decided not to go. She asked why, and I couldn't really give her a proper answer other than "I was lazy." She was always asking how my then very pregnant sister was. She admired the fact that I was taking multivariable calculus and even joked that I should tutor her. She was very enthusiastic when she told me she loves the guitar and that she thought it "so cool" that I played. We had lunch at the cafeteria together one time, and on another we shared a laugh about how the two of us collectively wasted over a dollar trying to get a newspaper from a defective dispenser.

Every guy in the bookstore was still obviously attracted to her. Everyone was so interested in her that her age became a mystery we were all trying to solve. I'm not sure if I was the first to find out how old she was, but I did one day when we got around to talking about her high school years in Poland. She gave it away. I did the math and was disappointed to find out that she was twenty-four, which also surprised me because when I looked at her I always thought it looked about right that she was my age or maybe a year younger. I was nineteen and she knew this, so by then I was certain that this was never going beyond friendship.

Sadly our time together didn't last very long. I was really beginning to like her and whenever I would sign in for my shift I would always check the schedule to see if she worked that day too, secretly hoping that I would see her, if only for a few minutes. But after two weeks she stopped coming to work. She is one of those people who come in temporarily during the start of each semester when things are busiest in the bookstore.

I did not see her again until one day in November, when she dropped by the bookstore to leave a textbook with us for a friend of hers who was stopping by to borrow it. She exchanged a few short pleasantries with us and was off, but before she left she said good-bye last to me, and she was holding her hand out to me. She was not holding it out the way one would hold one's hand out to shake another's. Rather, she was holding it out with her palm facing downward. I reluctantly gave my hand to her, palm up, and she squeezed it, sending a shiver through the length of my arm and on down my spine. I did not see her again for a long time.

At the time I wasn't kidding myself. I'd mused that the hand "caress" had romantic overtones but really I knew she didn't like me the way I was beginning to like her, so I moved on turned my attentions to another pretty girl in my math class with whom I always had nice conversations about music.

The semester went on and ended without my seeing her again, my sister had already given birth, and I flew home to Manila for Christmas and had fun there and didn't once think of her. I came back to the states on the eve of Martin Luther King Day very depressed about leaving my family behind once again, and went back to work at the bookstore right after the holiday. To my great and wonderful surprise, she'd come to work there again, and we were very close once more, but I had no idea just how close we were about to become.

-End of Part I-

I'm Hungry

We have tons of cheese in the house. You know what this means.

That's right. It's grilled cheese time, baby! Oh yeah!

Longer, more dramatic post to follow tonight, and I do mean dramatic.

Woohoo!

Mark your calendars! The new Go-Betweens album is coming out on April 25th!

Only 60 days to go! Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Oh No! I Am a Failure!!!

I didn't do so well in either test I took today. It doesn't bother me too much because they were hard and I tried, but I am mildly chagrined because I've wasted a strike a bit early in two classes. I won't beat myself up over it though. It's hard trying to become an engineer. I guess I'm kinda glad even that now I know why I screwed up and next time I'll be ready. So watch out, the both of youse professors, you pair of fucking sadists.

Studying last night was a hoot. I brought home a bottle of Mellow Yellow to keep me up in case I pulled an all-nighter. The best soft drink for that is Mountain Dew but my school only sells Coke stuff, so I hoped the Mellow Yellow would keep me up just as well.

So I was hitting the books and then at about ten I decided to drink the soda. By around one I wasn't making any more progress and I was getting really distracted so I decided to turn in. I don't know if it was the nerves or the soda, but I didn't fall asleep til round 4:30, and I had to get up at seven. So I was tossing and turning for around three hours, futilely trying everything that might make me sleep. That may well have been the shittiest three hours of my life.

Anyway this entry is so boring and I've lost interest in it already, so, uh, bye.

My Trip to Costco

I am a proud price club member. I go to the price club because I am frugal and down-to-earth, and because I recognize and appreciate great value when I see it. I also go because I am cheap.

I really hate going to the price club because it's always crowded. It's bad enough going there alone, but it becomes a nightmare when I go there with more than one other person in tow, because it's a statistical surety that someone from the group (i.e. me) will leave to look at the DVD's and will later on spend a long, long time peeking into every aisle in a seemingly futile attempt to find out where the hell everyone else has gotten to amidst a sea of fellow cheapskates. But if I must go to the price club, I must, and I prefer to do so during odd hours under the assumption that everyone else but me has something better to do than go to the freaking price club on a weekend night.

So tonight, Saturday night, was one of those times when my sister and I had to go in order to stock up nuestra casa. I had a plan all laid out--we would go at around 6 PM and enjoy a decent parking space and some room to actually move around inside the store. When we got there at ten-to-seven, the parking lot was virtually empty. "Jackpot!" I cried. I was giddy and giggling like a little girl. I imagined there would be few people there tonight, but not that few. My timing was perfect. I had outsmarted everyone. I am a fucking genius!

As you have probably already figured out, it was closed. As it turns out, the price club closes at six on Saturdays. Apparently, even price club employees have better things to do on a Saturday night than be in the price club. Jesus, I am such a loser.

New Shit

It's been over a month since I started this bad boy and I couldn't help but notice, as you, dear reader, have probably noticed too, that my blog has so far lived up to its alliterative moniker.

Reading other blogs, it's become clear to me that the funniest ones are about normal people, like you and I, who fail, miserably or not. It's not schadenfreude, it's empathy. We're all human--well, most of us, anyway--and our failures bind us together the same way our triumphs do, perhaps even more so.

Since no one else seems to screw up as much as I do, especially when it comes to love, that's what I'm going to write about. I'm not going to start today because I want my dumb stories to last for a bit while I go out and put myself in more painfully uncomfortable and hopefully hilarious situations. Hopefully this thing develops a cult following. That would be sweet. But even if it doesn't, hopefully I make a few of you laugh a little from time to time. We're all in the same boat after all.

The Dark of the Matinee

I saw "Hitch" yesterday and it was nice. Oh my God I'm so gay.

Beginning to See the Light

Why is it that when I have homework due very soon, that's when I decide to do the things that I normally wouldn't bother to do when I actually have the time to do them? Like clean my room or check my email and stuff, or update this blog for that matter, although that I have been doing somewhat regularly.

Anyway, today is Ash Wednesday. For those who don't know, Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten season for us Catholics. Lent, as the cooler of us Cats call it, is a 40-day period of personal sacrifice which, as I recall it, is designed to bring us closer to God as well as to commemorate the 40 days and 40 nights Jesus spent fasting in the desert where he was also tempted by Satan. Lent ends with Holy Week, which in turn commemorates the passion, death, and ressurection (i.e. Easter) of Christ.

Aside from getting ash imposed on our foreheads (as in 'from ash we came, to ash we shall return'), today is also a day of fasting and abstinence. This means we can only eat one meal today, and if things haven't changed, it should be fish. This fasting continues throughout Lent, although on Fridays only. We are also encouraged to give something up for the whole season as well, in line with the whole sacrifice thing.

I stopped going to Church on Sundays, Until very recently, I was going weekly without fail, when I realized I was becoming too dependent on God. This sounds very silly but let's say I had a big test or something like that. Then I would pray in Church that I'd do well, and going to Church and saying this prayer was more of a priority than actually studying for the test. So I decided not to go for a while. So far it's worked out, although I must admit I do worry that I may be damning myself from the Big Guy.

I like to think that God is a pragmatist and doesn't really give a shit if gay people get married, as long as they're happy, and I also like to think that he won't send good people to Hell just because they believe in Allah or Buddah or nothing at all (which is what we Catholics--maybe all Christians--are taught).

Given my taste for modifying my religion, I myself was surprised that I decided to fast today. So I went to school with only an apple to eat all day. Of course by eleven I was hungry as hell so a friend and I went out and bought a sandwich. And then when I got home, I pigged out on leftovers from our little Chinese New Year celebration last night.

So goes my attempt at reconciliation with the Man upstairs. Maybe I'll fast every Friday this Lent, I don't know yet. I want to, but it's really hard, which is really the point of all this. I'll try.

Wrapped Up in Books

Maybe it's just me, but when the train is full and I have to stand up, I like to peruse the novels other passengers are reading. I'm aware that it's a pretty obnoxious thing to do, which is why I try to be as unobtrusive as possible so much so that I doubt that the other passengers even know I'm doing it. I find it cool because I get free previews. If a few pages of a book seem good, I may consider keeping an eye out for it in a library or a bookstore or something.

Whenever I do this, the one thing I look for that tells me whether a book has a chance of being good are the names the author gives his characters. This may sound like a non sequitur--and it probably is one--but it's very important to me. Here's an example. I was in a bookstore a few years ago and I saw some books from the "Left Behind" series of semi-religious novels. At the time, I'd yet to have heard about said series, so I went so far as to pick a book up and read the blurb. It seemed interesting enough, like a modern interpretation of the book of the Revelation to St. John (which is really freaky, by the way), so I opened it to the first page. After reading the first character name that came up, Rayford Steele, I put the book right back on the shelf. I mean, come on, man, any book whose characters have names like Rayford Steele has to be a crock of shit.

Unless in parody, it's very important that the characters in a book I read have no shitty names like Rayford Steele or WASPy ones like first names that begin with T and end with R, such as Trevor or Tucker or Taylor, you know, names that your neighbors whom you suspect may be klansmen might have. God, I don't know, maybe it works. After all, more than three years down the line, I still have that awful fucking Rayford Steele name etched onto my brain. The only good book I've come across with that sort of name that I liked is The Catcher in the Rye.

So should anyone reading this decide to write a book, please, give your characters normal names like Elizabeth Bennett or Arthur Dent. If you must give them "weird" ones, make them cool like Yossarian or Stiva Oblonsky or Zaphod Beeblebrox.

I Don't Want to Play Football

I suppose the question of the day (three times and counting) is "Did you watch the Superbowl?"

Of course not. Competitive sports suck. Everyone should just play for fun, not for glory, because that's when feelings get hurt and people cry and stuff. Plus, football is totally homoerotic.

As the great poets Belle and Sebastian put it: I don't want to play football/I don't understand the rules of the game/...I don't understand/The thrill of running, catching, throwing/taking orders from a moron/grabbing for the sweaty crotches/getting hit by people I don't know...

Do I feel like I missed the spectacle? Kind of. But those who watched it missed out on a nice evening of Nick Drake and the Velvets.

Take Your Carriage Clock and Shove It

"Hey, Rich, what time is it?"

"It's three-thirty-five." How glib!

If only I could answer that smoothly every time someone asked me the time, right? Right. But whenever I am posed the above question, the following thoughts pop into my head, thus rendering any hope of giving a normal answer useless:

1. Do I tell you the time or do I show you my watch and make you tell the time for yourself?

2. Do I round off the time? Do I say two-thirty instead of two-twenty-eight?

3. Is it "a quarter of four" or "quarter to four?" Or are both understood? Do they even mean the same thing?

4. If we're in class, do I tell you the actual time or just how many minutes of class are left?

There's so much pressure in giving someone the time. I get performance anxiety. I start stuttering like an idiot and eventually give the wrong time and have to correct myself, like an even bigger idiot. I wish everyone would just wear a watch.

On a totally different note, I was reading "The Bob Dylan Albums" by Anthony Varesi in the library today and I was in the chapter on Blonde on Blonde and Varesi mentions that "4th Time Around" is a parody of the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood." I thought about both songs and put the lyrics of the Dylan song to the Beatles' melody in my head and it seemed to fit. I tried it on the guitar when I got home, and fit it did. That's pretty nifty, I guess, but really I don't think it's as hard as it seems. Maybe all songs of the same time signature can be superimposed with each other. I've seen one other example of this. The Rhodes Tavern Troubadors are a DC band with a great guitar player (Dave Chappell--not to be confused with the comedian with a similar name) and they put the lyrics of "Pinball Wizard" to the tune of "Folsom Prison Blues" in their live show. It's a really cool rendition, and in the end they play the Townshend power chords, thus making everyone in the room feel like smashing the place up, in a good way.

Little Bastard

God damn that Puta-what-fucking-ever groundhog! Six more weeks of winter my ass!

I want spring! I want love to come back in the air to remind me how much life sucks!

More cold and then now taxes. I never win.

If you see that rat, shoot it.

Atrocity Exhibition

New word alert! Coprophagia. Look it up, you coprophagist!

I think spring is coming. Yay! ^_^ Hooray for warmth!!!

Liar

Oh by the way, that story I read about a coup maybe happening in the Philippines? Way false, man. Just talked to my mom and she said everything is copacetic. Phew.

Here, There, and Everywhere

God damn it!

My copy of the Beatles' Rubber Soul has a scratch on it, so I can't listen to "I'm Looking Through You"! Fuck!

Speaking of the Beatles, I asked my Fortran professor after class if he's from Liverpool. A dude I know was like, real serious, "I think it's England." After the prof explained to the dude that Liverpool is in England, it turned out the prof had studied in Liverpool a bit but has been told that he has a North Country accent. Then he went on about the Beatles and their accents whose intensities vary depending on their background, such as John having a heavy Liverpudlian accent and knowing Scouse because he came from a real working-class family.

So my professor is a Beatles fan, which is cool. I would have liked to have ridden the elevator with him to continue our little chat--just for the sake of conversation and not so much ass-kissing--but the "England" guy had to talk to him about stuff actually concerning the class so I left.

I used to dislike the Beatles when I was a kid. Then I got really obsessed with them, but now not so much. I realized just how much I really like them this morning during my Hydraulics class. My professor (the one with the ear hair who is, by the way, a boring and verbose motherfucker) was talking about surface tension and gave an example of beetles "knowing" about this and hence they can walk on water. When he mentioned that I thought to myself, "When did they do that?" I was thinking maybe it was an obtuse reference to John Lennon saying "We're more popular than Jesus" and it took me a while to figure out that my prof was actually talking about bugs.

And speaking of Jesus...It snowed in the DC area recently so the ground is wet all around here. On the train station floor, I saw what seemed to be the face of Jesus Christ drawn in the mud. Now I am a good Catholic boy and I don't mean to be blasphemous, but I was wondering about the possibility that this could have been a miracle. Of course it's purely coincidental that the mud took the shape of Christ and one might imagine a lot more things that the mud might look like. Incidentally, a study just ended about a statue of the Madonna that shed tears of blood a decade ago which concluded that the incident was "supernatural". Hmmm...

There is a Light that Never Goes Out

I'm very nervous right now. I just came across an article online and--although for me, its veracity is questionable--it seems that a coup d'etat is brewing in the Philippines, and while it won't be the first, it's pretty scary. I remember waking up one night to the sound of gunfire and explosions and flashes of light. We shall see if it ever comes to that.

I sure hope it doesn't.

Epic Problem

I am addicted to porn. :'(

Now there is precedence. We must celebrate our, er, idiosyncrasies.

It was the birthday of a high school buddy a couple of days ago. Happy birthday, Io. Ingat, pare.

In case you weren't wondering, I was joking. I'm not the first to admit to this sort of thing. I think it was Michael Douglas.

Aladdin Sane

I had a lot of fun by myself today. Not that way, sicko! After my classes ended before noon today, I decided to go crazy and watch two, count 'em, two movies. What was I thinking?! I'm insane! Watch out!

First: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. It's a Wes Anderson movie which means I know I like it even before I see it, and the first five seconds of the movie only serve as proof that the movie is a classic.

One of my favorite aspects of any Wes Anderson movie is the soundtrack, and The Life Aquatic is no different. Mark Mothersbaugh, late of Devo, does the score once again, and once again it's utterly charming. But the best and most interesting part of the soundtrack are the David Bowie songs that were Jobim-ized by Seu Jorge. Beautiful, just beautiful.

But perhaps the best thing The Life Aquatic (and I'm going to be biased here) are the Filipino pirates! Hooray! Hearing Bud Cort (Harold and Maude) speaking Filipino was pretty funny and seeing Bill Murray (Steve Zissou) kill them all to The Stooges' "Search and Destroy" was just super.

So that movie started at noon and ended around two so I had two-and-a-half hours to kill before Sideways started. So I left the theater to look for someplace to eat. Being in the middle of DC, I knew this place called Ollie's Trolley was nearby. I was told to go there by friends of mine. The thing with that place is that they only accept cash, which can be a problem for me, but after ascertaining I had enough I went there and had a burger and their fries, which they season with 25, yes, twenty-five spices. Mmmm.......... If you're ever in the area...

After eating I still had about an hour-and-a-half to go, so I loitered around Barnes and Noble, which was boring. After less then an hour, I decided to fuck it and just go in and wait in the theater for the movie to start.

Four-thirty. The cinema darkens, the previews roll. Then Sideways starts. It's a Paul Giamatti movie, what else is there to say? That guy is one of the best actors around. It's funny as hell, although I found it very sad because I could relate so much with Giamatti's uneasy, unstable, and neurotic character. Please tell me it's not just me!

Fuck this Shit, Part II

I had writtten around five paragraphs and then I realized they weren't funny and were just boring old updtes so I decided, you know, fuck it.

By now I've gone to all my classes. So what else is new? School sucks.

Gawd, I hate school. I like...pie.

Fuck this Shit

Back to school! I always wondered as a kid why stores made such a big deal about going back to school. I'd see all their signs advertising their back-to-school sales and I would get very, very depressed.

I've aged a lot since then. I'm older, wiser, and I actually am looking out for my future. And you know what? Going back to school still sucks.

I go to a pretty high-end university in Washington DC but I get a discount and I am not nearly as wealthy as a lot of my schoolmates. For example, I don't have and iPod. Instead, I have a CD player, which is, like, so 2003. Another example is this great meeting I was lucky enough to see between two lovely young brats who saw each other for the first time since the winter vacation. One was admiring the other's obviously fashionable boots, which made me recall instantly the song 'Poses' by Rufus Wainwright where he sings about there never being such grave a matter as comparing a certain article of clothing, whether it is sunglasses or leather jackets, I can't remember.

I hitch a ride to school, so today I was there a lot earlier than my first class. So I went to the library and took a nap and checked out the book about the Velvet Underground called 'Up-Tight'. It's very reassuring to know that one's school is not as uptight, no pun intended, as one thinks. So it's cool that we have that book and similar ones on our shelves. The literature books are ace too.

I had three classes today. First: Hydraulics. Sounds fun, eh? Luckily the professor was in first-day mode, and so he gave a semi-interesting lecture of the history of hydraulics, beginning with those civilizations that were set up near rivers like Egypt, Mesopotamia, et cetera, if you still remember your ancient history. Alas, his lecture was not as interesting as his ear hair, which totally mesmerized me every time I saw the side of his head.

Second: Fortran. This is a freshman class that I have to take (I'm a junior) because I transferred from community college and had not taken a similar course before. We're off to a very bad start with that class. Very boring first lecture, binary and hexadecimal counting systems, blah, blah blah. The professor for this one has an interesting accent, Liverpudlian perhaps. Will have to ask him. I wonder if he's met the Beatles? He certainly is the right age.

Finally: Reinforced concrete structures. SNORE.

I guess it's pretty apparent by now that I am a civil engineering student. If you guessed so, you're right! Congrats! You should be glad you stayed in school. Anyway, I've two new classes to attend to-morrow. Oh, I can't wait!

I'm Indie, Baby

I saw two great foreign films this week. I'm really sleepy right now, but I want to write a bit about them, in case, you know, no one reads this.

Friday was the day after one of my cousin's birthday, and we planned to watch the new Wes Anderson movie. The audience was seated and the movie began--but it was the wrong movie! It was the new Adam Sandler movie! So we left and got our money back since there wasn't much we felt like watching. I must admit I did want to see A Very Long Engagement but then I didn't think it would be something she'd want to watch. So we rented.
She'd never seen There's Something About Mary so she rented that one. I too felt like seeing it, for since I'd last seen it I've found out that the guy who keeps singing throughout the movie is none other than Jonathan Richman. I wanted to rent Run Lola Run a.k.a. Lola Rennt because I've recently developed a crush on Franka Potente.

While the title of this entry is an ironic statement, one I might make with just the right hint of indignation in my tone to convey hip I am, I do love 'independent' and foreign films, and not because it's cool to do so. Thus I suppose it's taken quite a while for me to see Lola, given that it came out in '98. So let me hide behind the fact that it is quite difficult to find new foreign and 'independent' movies in the Philippines, which is precisely where I am not right now on account of my trying to get a good college education and while I am now in a place where such movies prove to be easy acquisitions, I am also broke.

Run Lola Run is a German film written and directed (and scored, I might add) by Tom Tykwer, then the boyfriend of the star of the film, Franka Potente. The plot is simple: Lola must obtain and deliver 100,000 Deutschemarks to her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) in twenty minutes, hence all that running. The whole movie looks like one whole techno music video but is also nice study on destiny and the ramifications of the little things that happen--things we do or fail to do, perhaps--as we approach that destiny. I had on good authority for almost a year now that it was a great movie, and boy, was it ever.
This is stuff I've thought about for a while now and thought I was just being paranoid or something, you know, like if I decided not to type this tonight and wait till morning. But it needn't be that momentous an event. When I decide to take a swig from the bottle of water that is next to my computer or even when I decide to blink my eyes--even those tiny things may influence the future. Is that called the butterfly effect? I may have to check that movie out too, but it looks so crappy.

I did get around to seeing A Very Long Engagement. Just came home from it tonight with my sister. It is a great movie, very touching. It's directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and stars Audrey Tautou, whom he also directed in Amelie. A wonderful love story, that's all.
The title to me sounds like the movie could be an old French comedy, which it isn't (although it would be considered a comedy in the classical sense that the Dantean trilogy is a comedy). Beautiful locations, nicely shot, in my opinion. Very French, very, very lovely.

I wonder if Jeunet and Tautou are a couple? It may very well be so. There are many examples of directors coupling with their leading ladies, like Tykwer and Potente, as well as Luc Besson and Milla Jovovich. I suppose the directors do get very close to the actors during filming and there will be mutual admiration, especially if they are making a great film. Then there is also something like that which goes on between Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino, where Tarantino seems to be in love with Thurman in a non-sexual way, as if he worships her like a goddess (and what man wouldn't?). It really shouldn't matter as long as they make great films, but for some reason it interests me.

Incidentally both Potente and Jovovich sport bright-red hair in Lola and The Fifth Element, respectively. Why is bright-red hair so hot?

WHFS, We Hardly Knew You

99.1 WHFS is a radio station that plays "alternative rock" here in the Washington DC area. Or, rather, it is a station that played alternative rock. At 12:00 pm EST Jeff Buckley's "Last Goodbye" faded out and was followed by "WHFS transmitiendo desde la ciudad capital de America: Esta es tu nuevo radio!" It is now a Spanish-language station targeted at a Central-American and Caribbean audience.

The change was a capitalist move, pure and simple, a way to make money off the growing Hispanic population of the area. It's all about money, a fact that any rational human being above the age of twelve should know, especially an American.

The sad part is that he doesn't. A lot of them don't. There is a petition to sign on the web to bring back the old format of WHFS. I signed it. I reviewed the other signatures. I wish I hadn't signed it. An alarming lot of the petition was bigoted libel aimed mostly at Mexicans as if Mexico is the only country in the Central American and Caribbean region. In my opinion, it's another glaring example that racism is alive and well in America. It merely hibernates until it has a reason, even a poor one, to rear its hideous head.

I hardly ever listened to 99.1. It's on my car's preset because there are only two rock stations here, but I always listen to CD's and when I do listen to the radio, it's mostly to public radio. The reason I signed the petition was a story I read about a girl who was introduced to Lloyd Cole's Rattlesnakes album by WHFS. I figured that a station that points a girl in the right direction like that can't be bad at all. Of course a lot has changed since 1984 and now the typical WHFS audience consists of people who will walk out on a Cure performance, which is just what happened when said legends were headlining the annual HFStival.

It is often pointed out that American society is one of immigrants, including the whites. The "Spics" that WHFS listeners so charmingly told to "go back to Mexico" have just as much right to their own radio station as the whites. And I'd rather it went to the Mexicans.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Caveat Emptor

I'm rather pissed off right now because I may have been gypped 60 bucks from a guy at half.com. I was looking for a certain textbook and he was selling it the cheapest. He had the picture of the book right and all but when it got to me it was the old edition. Fuck. I've contacted him and I'm waiting for a response from him before I leave him any negative feedback (ebay etiquette). I'm giving him a week to at least respond. I suppose it was equally my fault since i failed to make sure which edition I needed, but him being the experienced seller that he is should have made sure that he put up the proper picture of the book. Also, in my defence, he had 2003 listed as the year of the book, which is the year i need. He just had the wrong edition.
So I decided to buy the correct book from another seller this time for 70 bucks, and this time I made sure I had the right edition and all. So all in all if the first guy does rip me off, then that's 130 bucks for the book, right? It seems like a lot, I know, but my school bookstore is selling it for 150 bucks so I still save. How fucked-up is that?

Having worked in a college bookstore, I can tell you first hand that those places rip students off. They buy the books wholesale really cheap and then the markup is extraordinary! Then if you want to sell your books back it's more likely you'll get back a tenth of what you originally payed for the book than the promised maximum of half, that is if they buy your book back at all. That said, don't take it out on the employees! It's not their fault that the books are that expensive or that they're not buying your books back. They're just doing their jobs. The bookstore has to make money and book buyback is dictated by whether there is on-campus or national demand for the book you're trying to get rid of.

The smartest way to go that I so far know of is to get your books through the miracle of the internet. It's cheap and you don't have to leave the house. Keep the title of this blog in mind though: caveat emptor! I had to learn that the hard way!

Drive My Car

Got my car serviced yesterday. Nothing major--replaced front brakes, cleaned rear brakes, and rotated tires. Eighty bucks that I don't mind spending. I drive a Subaru and I just love her. I've crashed it badly, hit a deer, hydroplaned and skidded and she's still in one piece, getting me places, never letting me down. Man, I love that car.

I archived all my stuff from last semester. Generally I would just throw that stuff out but now I've begun thinking about things like whether or not I'm going to be getting my engineering license after I get my degree. Should I decide to do so, then there will be that big test to worry about and hopefully I'll know where my notes are, and I can learn that shit all over again. A professor of mine once told me that you go to college to learn how to learn, and if you've learned something once then you can certainly learn it again. That's golden advice right there. Keep that in mind.

While getting that done, I was listening to two interesting albums: Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister and Love's Forever Changes. Both are great. They're very similar, too, though there's around thirty years between them. B&S do sound like they're from the sixties and I've just now thought about it but maybe the conjunction in their title gives their sound away (i.e. Chad and Jeremy, the Mamas and the Papas, etc.) Anyway, Sinister and Changes both have the whole Phil Spector wall-of-sound thing going on in them, which I always loved, and, of course, they're both just a solid bunch of songs. If you've got money to spare (who does?) you may want to consider either, particularly the Love LP. If a woman comes up to a man's room and sees those records she will think he is intelligent, sophisticated, and sensitive and then he has her. Trust me on that one.

Right.

On to vacuuming the house.