Looking for Jose for Dummies 2.0

My room was probably made out of the same material they make ovens with. Sometimes, i find myself looking for brand names like, Hanabishi or GE hidden somewhere on its walls or maybe, it’s on the door, already covered by the ugly brown paint they chose to splash it with. Minus the first two sentences, it’s just too fucking hot inside the room. try to get inside in the middle of the day and you find yourself dripping water much faster than the La Mesa dam and no matter how many fans bombard you with stale air, you still end up sweating 98% of your body composition. That’s why nobody dares to bring a sex date in this room—in the middle of the day, at least.

Well, it’s a Sunday, not the Holy Friday, but yes, a Sunday. Chris Martin sings in my head, punched right in my ears by a pair of trusty white earphones while my body slowly battles dehydration. I am in my room, alone, almost 12 noon and seeking refuge from Sunday boredom. Tina Turner screams her way in, girls doo wooping behind her, it’s Fools in Love. Aarrgh. I remember the movie. Tina gets thrown out of a running car. She offers her watch to check in at a Ramada. She divorces Ike. Ike doesnt want her to keep the last name. She wins. A couple of days ago, she was on Oprah, still looking scary.

Now, it’s Dusty Springfield. Son of a preacher man. I like the song. Was at work yesterday singing the line over and over again. People stared at me. I kept singing. I slept singing it last night. Elton John. Never really liked him. Never really knew what his hits were except for the songs for Norma Jean and that princess. And that pigeon song. Now I have four Johns in my playlist. He bids goodbye to the yellow brick road. I like it.

They were supposed to watch a musical, I think. They were late and since it was not the Philippines, they were not allowed to get inside. They ran to the nearest pub. A man was playing the first few bars of Everlasting Love. The girl removes her gloves…joins the man at the piano. Everybody shuts up and listens to her. She finishes the song and gets applauded. Grolsch beer came on screen. I miss the Netherlands and the nice advertisements they have on TV. And that somebody I keep thinking about. I ended up downloading Jamie Cullum’s version last night.

Janis Joplin. Don’t know her. I kept reading about her a lot. Especially in those cheap romance novels i used to read a lot when i was in high school. Now, i just mark the parts where the characters fuck in the kitchen. Back to Janis. I dont know Bobby Mcgee. Who cares? Joni Mitchell. Thought she was a man. Joni. Johnny. John. Get it? Get it? I hate it that Sharon Cuneta dared to sing her song. I’ve looked at clouds from both sides…First heard Joni’s name on Love Actually (Emma Thompson’s and Professor Snape’s story). Watch the movie.

I wonder who Bette Davis was, but Kim Carnes made a nice ditty about her eyes—I mean, Bette Davis eyes. Kid Rock. Cats in the cradle. Temperature’s rising in my room. Like it. I got my music.

I can’t sleep so, go ahead and read what I have to say when I can’t sleep.

Just a couple of days ago, a highschool classmate started a yahoo group for our class which was graduated seven years ago. First thread of messages was all about when the reunion is going to be since, everybody thinks it’s high time we get together again because most of the people in our class have already tied the knot, had a nice shag and eventually became parents. Of course, the order of events can be changed, depending on how cynical you are.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my classmates. I had so many great moments with everybody, but every time the idea of getting together again with them makes me cringe in some weird fashion. Maybe because I embarassed myself a lot back then. Haha. Like when we played volleyball while still in our school uniforms, my pants literally tore off me when I ran to give the ball a nice setting. A classmate casually suggested we staple my pants because I did not have any other pair with me. We almost used the whole box of staple wires and I had to walk very carefully or else staple wires could have shot out of me.

And many others, of course, since I just have bad, fucked-up genes. The ones that make me perfectly capable of making an arse out of myself in public. I will be at the reunion, I say to myself. I miss everybody badly and I know we’re gonna laugh our behinds off with so many things from the past. I am curious how many guys in our class ended up being gay, or, have the most babies and maybe, have remebered how we stapled my pants back again.

I am playing Globe’s "Feel Like Dance" on my iTunes and I can’t help remebering the whole class dancing to it because UMD made it so fucking cool to show it off to everybody. Even if we were walking in the middle of a street we would do our best moves. Of course, looking back, it was sooo disgusting but we had fun. I am supposed to dance to the tune, but I’d rather sit down and think back to the days when somebody could staple your pants back up and told you taht you were going to be fine.

Teachers were not always my biggest role models. I just won’t have most of them as people I would want to associate myself with. That sounds pretty obnoxious of me, but yeah, i am glad i am obnoxious. In high school, second year, i think, when our class had this character as a teacher for biology. Don’t get me wrong but, had i fallen asleep in her class, it was because i chose to, not because i was sleepy. With all due respect to her profession, she was just not a pretty sight to look at. With that said, she also had the air of a scowling British headmistress and well, she loved passing around her pictures when she was still supposedly a beauty to look at. Oh well, i hated her because she kept misspelling things and told us that typhoon signal number 1 was the strongest. She died several months later but nobody could forget her as the teacher we chose not to believe.

Back in third grade, Maggi noodles came to our school to feed the whole campus with stale noodles and impress us with shiny cards with popular nursery rhymes printed on them. I got Miss Muffet, but she was eating chicken-flavored noodles instead of turd (curds, i know) and whey. A Maggi lady came to our room and gave each of us a small yellow cup filled with some noodle soup in it. Of course, there was also this fancy and yellow and plastic spoon with the Maggi logo on it. We were having the time of our lives when we saw the treat. I was looking forward to bringing the spoon and the cup home right after class. But strange enough, after eating, our teacher, a withering old crone told us that we couldn’t bring any of those things back home and the stuffs, especially the pretty spoons, should stay. I was crushed. I wanted to cry. I raised my hand and indignantly told her that I would bring my cup and pretty spoon home, no matter what she said.

She said she was going to have me killed by a local witch. I went home with the distorted nursery rhyme in my pocket sans cup and spoon. I felt so terrible.

And to think, this all happened. Oh, i went to public schools.

So many things can happen to an innocent laptop but here I am, chasing fucking red ants across my keyboard as they scurry about, probably, scared-shit as hell as I am while doing a much-needed genocide.

You see, I am scared of killing or at least seeing anything get killed at al.. Yep, a big ‘ol wimp. I remember having a fat white chicken that I religiously fed as anybody would a pet dog. Pretty much, I loved that hunk of meat. Day came when my mom and my grandmother started the morning by arguing what kind of recipe suited best a fat white chicken. A vat of water boiled and soon enough, we were eating my pet nicely cooked in vinegar, lots of garlic, soy sauce and onions and peppers. It was horrible. I was crying the whole time my chicken was slit at the throat to drain its life. And I was 19.

Just this morning, i plugged my laptop to get its battery charged as i had been using it last night for watching, well, a bit of soft porn. If you need the URL, try to guess it. Then, when i woke up this afternoon and checked my ibook, I was surprised to see little ants running across my screen, my keyboard and even the USB and firewire ports are full of them. I love Macintosh computers and I know that my ibook is yeah, fucking sweet, but it is hey-dude-i-envy-you-using-a-better-computer-sweet not candy-sweet for pete’s sake. Without giving it a second thought, I picked up one of the tiny, disgusting things and pinched it. I could have sworn the damn thing cussed or squealed (my ant grammar is poor). It was a bittersweet moment. I picked two between my thumb and forefinger and did it again. And again. And more. I killed an army of ants and I’m feeling disgusted of myself. They have lives too, I know, but hell, I love my ibook. I wanna shed a tear as I did for my chicken, but then, I am not a fan of adobong ants. I still see some of them take a peek and run across the monitor. Of course, i get to squish them dead.

. Now, tell me, is PETA gonna be after me soon?