Why I blog

All it takes is two hundred words. My creative writing class exclaimed 500 to write a story of a moment. My experience tells me carefully hand picked adjectives and adverbs to say everything that contains everything you want to say or at least implies it (Ernest Hemingway’s tip of the iceberg).

I haven’t been blogging lately and amidst illustrating, photoshopping and studying, which I have to admit takes a lot of my time, I just can’t write.

I want to write because I envy Time magazine writers. Their articles talk like swashbuckling classic fiction. And their insights are always fresh and hip with a dash of humor sometimes, political articles aside.

My favorite writer is Joel Stein. He wrote an insightful formula that suggested a ranking for TIME 100. Never mind that his math skills are no less than what a common tambay needs to survive in everyday life.

It had a point.

And that point was delivered in stylish fashion.

I can’t tell you fully how frustrated I am that I can’t adequately express my ideas. Every time I want to, my mind streaks ahead…

…to no more than a standstill. It has worked against me a lot of times.

Maybe it does take more than sudden fiction style writing to communicate effectively.   But not mathematically.

(202 words)

What Sucks Today

between 11 am and 3pm:

There’s this shirt I’ve always wanted to buy in my head. It has a collar, is jet black and is lined with parallel, horizontal, white stripes.

What sucks # 1: Today, there’s nothing like it in the whole SM department store! That’s where I usually end up after designer store hopping in Megamall in an attempt to get a great bargain for more or less the same look.

Nike offered a cooler alternative: almost the same polo shirt look but with bright green stripes instead.

What sucks # 2: It’s a chunky P2450! and the salesladies did no help in trying to look at me gaping at the price tag after asking if I needed help. I don’t understand why the hell they can’t stop at faking “hello sir” , “ano iyon sir?”. CAN’T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?

After an eat all you can lunch at Saisaki, (What doesn’t suck: Though I wasn’t up for Japanese food that time, I had a blast munching all the Salmon I can eat! Slimy Salmon sssslhhhup, sssslhhup) I accompanied my sister to Powerbooks. She had to buy an archi book she needed for class.

What hilariously sucks: I fast walked to the Kid’s Section.

I take comfort in the fact that amongst the school of kids turning pages of Barney books, The Berenstein Bears series was still there. Oh and there were two ladies sitting below the shelf where it was (OK that doesn’t suck but…).

(…they were talking about their love lifes). What Sucks # 3: Why oh why in the kid’s section and why oh why remind me of my love’s troubles now?

Magulang ako, so I got like fifteen Berenstein books all at once and sat down. The gaurd was giving me this “what the hell are you doing with those and read only book at a time stare”). Out of embarrassment, I returned most of it and continued reading “Mama’s New Job”. hehe.

What Sucks # 3: I dozed off while I was at it! What a sight it would have been; kids playing around me and seeing an almost fully grown adult act like a complete damulag. That’s one of the maturest things I have done.

What Sucks # 4: Someone conked my head to wake me up. I didn’t know who.

Sucks really. Hahaha.

Entry Number One

I have been on the lookout everyday, for three days now, for special moments that I can write about. Those moments have not been elusive but rather my ability to seize those moments on camera is what elusively slips every time from my mind.

Like yesterday in another so and so drinking session at Rap’s house: It was a reunion of that alternative band that never took off no thanks to me, the disgruntled guitarist wannabe bassist who never showed up for concert auditions and gigs. I knew from the start we weren’t cut out for it.

Tista, you’re strumming fingers are too much for the tension on the guitar strings. The opposite applies to you Ralph and that you look horribly funny singing an emo song with your eyes closed. And Rap, I haven’t seen you perform with your new band but I swear to my foot …. errr bigyan mo nalang ako ng matinong advice sa love life ko.

As all inumans I go to, I had to leave early lest my dad locks the gate for me.

That morning’s afternnon I didn’t know what hit me but despite waking up feeling I could not walk much, I picked up my football and took freekicks on the street. My kid brother and I took turns shooting into a roughly one meter goal – our open small gate.

It’s not as easy as most people would think as we would position the ball at a 45 degree angle from the far post and made buwelo at the same angle albeit two meters or so from the ball.

The trick was to bend it like Beckham but for the most part we struck the ball wide into mom’s pots and plants instead. I finally got it after stubbing my toe on the ground a couple of times and when I tried the second time around, the ball went in hard just in time to thud on my (b)itchy sister’s stomach.

It would have been better caught on camera and so is a shot from behind of my brother taking aim out our gate, and those candid pics of the smiles and laughters of me and my bandmates which are the stuff that good times are made of.

But alas, they’re all freaking gone now, as elusive as they had come.