jaiskizzy

when i was young,the only thing i knew about papang was that he was rich. he was like a beardless santa claus to us. on the rare occasions he would visit, my siblings, cousins and i would line upon his arrival, one hand ready for the mano, the other palm upward for the legal tender. on our birthdays, he'd come and bring the best gifts. these appearances became fewer as we grew up until the tables were reversed and we visited him instead. and we realized that he was not ours alone. he was zeus, who had many wives and fathered many children, who in turn gave him other grandchildren. however, we didn't feel different about him for we had nothing but respect for him.

being a man of a few words, he did not force it upon us; it was automatic. being with him was like being with a king. you had to be at your best behavior. even the drunkards and boors knew courtesy in his presence. part of it as, i guess, his lotharian legacy. but im pretty sure it was primarily because, at his age, he was still hard at work. instead of reading newspapers on a rocking chair, he went to his office and did paperwork and managed his business. (once, i was going home on a holiday and he was in his office signing papers.) and he'd been doing this his whole adult life. he was a self-made man and i admired him for it. he was my don corleone.

that's why it tore my heart to pieces when i found out he had passes away. it was too sudden. i did not know that visiting him in the hospital was the last time i'd see him breathing. he'd been sick before but he recovered from it quickly. some people say that it was his time. i& disagree. it was not his time. i just had lunch with him about a month ago and he was in a great health. on the day he was admitted to makati med, he was still giving detailed orders to my father regarding the business. it was not his time to go. death miscalculated.

when my wife told me on the phone, the tears just burst. i really had no inkling that he wouldn't survive. had i known when i was in the icu room, i could have at least said thank you to him for everything we owe him. which is a lot.

papang always insisted that i was smart. everytime my name would pop up in a conversation, he'd comment how smart i was. i was a very intelligent kid, but he kept this up even when i dropped out of college and basically messed up my life. now that i've pulled myself together with my own family and a stable job, i thought i was on my way to live up to what he'd been bragging about. it's too sad that he'll never get to see me prove worthy of the surname and make him completely proud of me as his first grandchild. it's even sadder that he'll never get to know his great granddaughter better, and vice versa.

wherever he is now, he's probably with mamang and getting the biggest ear-pinching of his life, but happy nonetheless, because the greatest advantage of having many families is the vast amount of genuine love we collectively give him back. rest in peace, papang.






p.s. of course, my grandchildren shall call me papang.

holy tp for my bunghole, batman! beavis and butt-head have returned! yes! three exclamation points!!!





i remember first day in college and some guy was having us go around the school and do get-to-know-each-other-better stuff, one question everyone had to answer was: what's your favorite tv show? 90% of my classmates said friends. when it was my turn, i said "beavis and butt-head" and they all laughed like i was joking. and so i was like "duh, it's like the best fucking thing to ever go through cathode ray tube. for your insolence, i should all scoop your eyes out with a spoon and wear em like a monk's bead necklace!" in my head. (and that, my friends, is your pre-facebook years useless memory story for today.)

anyways, ive been a big fan of the deviant duo ever since i saw their first short "frog baseball" on liquid television. cant wait for october and find out which music videos they'll critique.

p.s. another one who needs to come back: migraine boy.

here's a rundown of stuff that happened recently. why? because i own this blog and i could put pictures of booger sculptures if i wanted to. also, any incoherence will be deliberate. anyways, grab a sandwich. this might take a while. (the reading of the post, not the booger sculptures)

burn baby burn
i realized that the creation story regarding a god making humans out of clay and cooking them in an oven is probably true because the only explanation for this ridiculously hot summer is that we are being reheated. last monday, i woke up with itchy arms. i had rashes near my elbows. as far as i know, i have no allergies. what's weirder was that the rashes suddenly disappeared and migrated to my buttcheeks, then to my thighs. as a believer of mind over body, i endure the itch til the next day, which i did not know was scheduled as worst heartburn day. ive had mild gerd attacks for years that went away upon burps. this last one proved strong for not only did it repel my eructative abilities but rendered different pills useless. when eating became painful, i gave up. i took time off work and spent three days in a hospital, nursed by my wife and roused from sleep by nurses. on my last day there, they knocked me out with anesthesia and alien probed my insides. (looked like i swallowed a tiny wolverine on berserker barage) before that, my wife kept asking me if i was afraid. actually i was looking forward to it. i wanted to know what i would see during loss of consciousness. so when i was in the operating room and they were about to press a chlorofor-filled hanky on my face, i was like, this is it, im going to find out what coma patients dream of. which was nothing. something that tasted like piss was sprayed into my mouth and my eyes closed to blink, and then i opened them again and i was somewhere else. i had teleported to a garage. diagnosis: gastritis, esophagitis, hiatal hernia and urticaria. chocolates, spicy food, juices, softdrinks, beer and a bunch of others are categorized as should be consumed. went home almost immediately after the procedure and awaited the excuse for the botched rapture that some moron predicted and so many morons believed. there should be a rule that anyone who makes a prediction that doesn't happen gets pooped on by all skeptics. and anyone who believed the bullshit licks the poop off.

sweet child o' ours
there's so much to be said about our daughter, and yet none of it wont be enough. iaine is such a beautiful little girl. she's always smiling, always happy and it's infectious. she makes us all laugh with her tricks and random quirks. like when we were on the bed and i saw her clamp her lips shut as if she had eaten something. i grabbed her and tried to fish it out with my index finger but couldnt because iaine wouldnt open her mouth. so i told her to say "aah" and she just gave me the funniest half-opened mouth face. i just lost my wits there and found out that there really wasn't anything in there. i got pwned by my own daughter. the only time she starts a hissy fit is when her slumber's cut short. but even that doesnt last long. she'll be clingy and frowny for a while but then revert to good mood real quick. as with all kids, she'll blow a fuse when you take away from her something she wants but it won't last long or develop into an all-out hellspawned tantrum. i want to teach her early on that you can't always have everything you want. but what iaine is really, really good at is being sweet. this is the greatest reward of parenthood, of having a job, of giving love. i work my arse off to take the pig meat home. i try to get as much sleep as i can on weekeneds but can't because sometimes iaine would half-wake up in the middle of night and id have to give her milk to keep her calm. that and all of the many, many ordeals a new parent had to go through, reduced to microscopic size when compared to the overpowering warmth of iaine's sweetness, which i don't even know if she understands or not. the other day, she woke me up with a kiss on the cheek and then proceeded to do the same to her mother. and yesterday, my wife and i had a small argument downstairs and weren't in speaking terms when we lied on the bed upstairs. iaine was trying to get some sleep and probably noticed the silence so she took my hand then took her mother's hand and put them on top of each other. cue minitears. chibihime patched things up for us. on a totally unrelated note, how did abs-cbn get a way with titling their new series after the famous rock band? (answer: by using the same power of unoriginality that allowed gma7 to rip off yo gabba gabba)

marooned (and how was the sandwich btw?)
first foreign artist's concert i ever watched was vanilla ice in araneta coliseum when i was in grade school. second was bon jovi in rizal memorial sports complex in high school. and third was linkin park in ccp open grounds a few years ago. capping off my very long weekend is the much-anticipated maroon 5 concert, which i had filed a leave and bought tickets for about one month prior. this was primarily for my beloved love because even though im working 5 days a week and we have a child to take care of, i still wanted us to be able to spend time together like before we got married. of course, with the aforementioned factors and time constraints, we dont get to do it as much. a movie here, a dinner there. so i thought the maroon 5 show was a great rare moment date for us. plus it's actually her first concert experience. so we put off watching house episodes on bed and queued up with the marooners (i dont know if they're actually called that), bronze tickets in hand. we found a nice spot and camped there. when the lights went out and the drums pounded out, the awesome soundtrip began. the band sounds exactly the same live, which is always nice. jeean spent the whole hour and a half of pop rock music perched on the rails. inside the smx convention center, i noted three types of maroon 5 fans. the chill ones who went there for the music (where we belong); the uptights, who were there because they can afford a handful of vip tickets but dont really know the band so they just sit in their chairs waiting for freebies to be thrown their way; and the fantards who know every single word of every song and who'd sacrifice their vocal chords just to scream the name of the vocalist who cant even hear them. i admit, i merely downloaded the maroon 5 tracks but i really believe that the best way to support a band you like is to watch their concerts. and to jeean: "back and forth we sway like branches in a storm, change the weather still together when it ends." i love you very much. looking forward to more adventures our copycats will try to imitate but fail at miserably.

usually i'd type out a couple of sentences to signal the end of the blog post and wrap things up but


p.s. on the bus ride to manila, there was a family of four in front of me and when the bus conductor handed them their tickets, two of which were discounted, the father asked the conductor how much all of it was. the conductor said later because he had other people to attend to. to the model father of two, use your brain, asswipe.

on a gaming news blog, a socially important question was asked: what's your dream game? this i pondered over a teetering stack of cases of bottled anger for grammatically challenged company speakers suffering from dysarthria who should not be given the task of divulging vital information and insult my intelligence. my answer after this part where i pressed enter.

the world has ended and you are the last person alive. but unlike i am legend, there are no vampires fighting over a piece of your precious flesh. you are simply alone and free to do anything. and i mean, anything. everything works, there's enough water supply and electricity to last your singular needs for years. you can go anywhere. and i mean, anywhere. take a car and drive to the next city. locked doors can be kicked open or broken through with an axe. low fences do not constrain you to a certain path. you eventually end up on a skyscraper rooftop and fall and at this point you realize why you're the only one alive and why there is no life meter: you are immortal.

and then the mystery gradually unfolds. there is no specific location or action for the story to progress. you're out for food and you catch a glimpse of a moving shadow. you chase it but it's gone. clues pop up where you are, not where you have to be. the clues point to a place where there's a machine that will allow you to create one companion. the possibilities are endless. you can make a person of the opposite sex, an animal, a robot, anything. whatever you create, it will do your bidding.

later on, you'll find your companion dead, evidently murdered. you return to the machine to create a new one but the machine has been destroyed. and then from far, far away, a beam of light shoots up in the sky and when you follow its direction, you find out it is coming from an island which you must get to...



p.s. i dream of a future where there are no loading screens.
p.p.s. i left out the ending on purpose in case a game studio decides to purchase the idea. but i do have an ending in mind. you're god and its creation 2.0 and you're doing it as a human and erased your knowledge of goddom and... oh shit.

years ago, round the time when i only had one sibling, my father worked overseas. he'd mail us pictures of himself standing alone in the middle of the desert or sitting in his room, wearing a keffiyeh and sporting a badass beard and my mom would send him photographs of us with notes written on the back. and then, sometimes we'd be gathered in the living room, hunched over this silver casette player making voice recordings. though i have no distinct recollection of what childish crap i yapped about to my far-flung father (probably how we missed him, my shoe size and some toy i wanted to have), i do remember a particular portion of those recordings, the recurrent theme song of my parents that concluded our voice tapes:

 

anyways, to compare, if in the future i leave my family to work abroad, there'll be no hardcopy photos in the mail with scribbles in the back, we got facebook. and jeean wont have to subdue a hyperactive iaine just to record her wishlist, we got skype. still, the mere thought living several time zones apart from my two beloveds is an immediate ticket to boohooville. acclimating to different area codes was hard but i managed it because there's text and that comforting knowledge of being able to scurry home in a dozen jiffies. to actually spend a year or two in another country without getting to hug my wife or play with my daughter is gonna be quite an ordeal. i extremely hope that it never comes to that.

p.s. as of this typing, hitgirl is still battling cold and fever. give the cute little baby girl a break, will ya?

p.p.s. and my best friend, jeean, is dueling with stress. cut the gorgeous sexy woman some slack, will ya?

if you've been living under a pile of dry cow dung or relying on your telltale neighbor's spithole for recent events, then you havent probably heard/read the latest great piece of news from the magical world of science. word is out from the astronomical grapevine about a newly discovered planet some 20 lightyears away from earth that just might be the next globe humans would inhabit if for some reason we'd need to skedaddle from third rock.

it's called gliese 581g and, being in the goldilocks zone (not too hot, not too cold) it is, for now, the best contender for our intergalactic squatting. and by having near-perfect conditions for life to exist, there's a supersize chance that there'd be living beings there, the looks of which, i bet, no sci fi novelist could dream up by a longshot.

what repercussions this discovery would have on religion, i'd rather not go there in avoidance of rant mode. but i really am psyched like a punk on acid about this because it has always been my big wish to be alive  on the advent of any alien race confirmation.

and who knows, at the rate technology's is evolving, it wouldnt be a moon-punch to expect that one day iaine would aking my permission to go on a vacation with her bffs on gliese 581g -- or whatever it would be named then (planet jaithemagnificent would be nice).


p.s. speaking of the r-word, ive finished the art of war and moving on to richard dawkins' the god delusion.
p.p.s. nam.