mike

1. First, come to Joy Division/New Order night this Saturday at Saguijo!

Come, Come, Come! The Purplechickens will be playing second to the last, so you guys can come a bit late, and still have loads of fun!

2. Who wants to watch Sweeney Todd this weekend?

like say, on Saturday... before  Joy Division/New Order night at Saguijo!

Message me! Sunday? How about next week? Technically, I'm out of a job then!

I promise, I won't bite. Besides, people often mistake me for a lesbian. And lesbians aren't really prone to biting, now are they?

3. For a time, I was called "DJ White Rabbit!"

Yesterday, I had to go to the RJ building at Makati Ave. Eventually, I ended up on-air again on AM Mayhem. They called me DJ White Rabbit... and I could feel my reputation slowly fading away.

In the span of two days, I've seen three women wearing burqas. In a country that's both predominantly Christian, and professes to be liberal and free, at the very least, such is quite a sight to behold.

I was thinking how the idea of the burqa was always associated with repression and imprisonment, given that many Afghan women were forced to wear the full garb while under Taliban rule.

But seeing such in a place like the Philippines, it begs the question why. There's no systematic repression of women, or at least not in line with forcing them to wear the layers of felt or karakul.

So, I'm convinced somewhere along the way, these women actually chose to wear the burqa. It was their choice to hide away themselves.

At the very least, I could say the thought was interesting. Especially when one of them was holding a Spiderman backpack for one of her kids. Then came the thought of her taking her children to Toy Kingdom, or to Dairy Queen, or to the ice skating rink.

But is it completely an act of hiding? Or is it a more outward sign of faith?

I remember hearing about how some women in Afghanistan were hesitant about taking off their burqas. "This is our faith! This is how we want to lead our lives!"

Sure, some might say that the repression is so deeply set that the ones being repressed actually accept the reality of it. But how is that fundamentally different from us, "freethinkers," putting much emphasis on free speech and a non-intrusive, pluralistic society?  This is our faith, we might say! This is how we want to lead our lives!

I'm not saying that there's nothing wrong with the burqa. But neither am I saying that there's nothing wrong with untrammeled, free flowing discourse.

Maybe the point here is that to some extent, all peoples of the world have to deal with limits. And those limitations set how people want to lead their lives. There's no real way of describing or gaging freedom, in that sense then.

So now, the question is, I think, on what grounds does our "freedom" stand? Where does it come from? And more importantly, does it really reflect how we want to lead our lives?



 

makes me think about the many carrots i've been eating...



_ _ _ _ _ _

oh look, something mundane yet oddly interesting... arhmmmm...

Study: Monkeys 'pay' for sex by grooming

Enlarge By Shuji Kajiyama, AP file Japanese Macaque monkeys groom each other, sitting in a hot spring in the snow at Jigokudani Wild Monkey Park in Yamanouchi, Japan in January 2004. Male macaque monkeys pay for sex by grooming females, according to a recent study that suggests the primates may treat sex as a commodity.

"In primate societies, grooming is the underlying fabric of it all," Dr. Michael Gumert, a primatologist at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said in a telephone interview Saturday.

"It's a sign of friendship and family, and it's also something that can be exchanged for sexual services," Gumert said.

Gumert's findings, reported in New Scientist last week, resulted from a 20-month observation of about 50 long-tailed macaques in a reserve in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.

Gumert found after a male grooms a female, the likelihood that she will engage in sexual activity with the male was about three times more than if the grooming had not occurred.

_ _ _ _

Uhhh okay, i've got a Denman (?) hairbrush at home, some curlers, and a few nail cutters from singapore...

Would anybody want me to do their hair and nails? *wink*

I don't think "weird" is the right word to describe all what I've been doing ever since the new year flipped over and lives had drastically turned.

Especially if Merriam-Webster defines it in this way:

_ _ _ _ _ _
Main Entry: weird
Function: adjective
Date: 15th century
Definitely, no witchcraft is involved, though comforting is the thought that a human hand so endowed with powers over the cosmos took the time to control the present. Or that the alignment of

I wish I had the power to create candy, though! Or to have people never forget.

Extraordinary might suffice. But it would be better, I think, to say "out-of-the-ordinary."

Yes, maybe that's it, because it assumes that there is an "ordinary" to speak of. Or at least, something defined to be.

When things change, normal takes on a different air. It's the past. It's where everything was made to settle down, stay still and constant.

You'd wish it would just be renewed. That's the only way it can be made to continue on as the present.

I admit the pressure of the past still draws at me. Especially because the past was that good. Especially because the past was that happy.

My past is happy. And I believe worth renewing.

Maybe weird is an apt word to use, anyway, given the other definition of Merriam-Webster.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Main Entry - weird
Function - noun
Date - before 12th century
1: fate destiny; especially : ill fortune
2:  soothsayer
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

I don't want to think it as ill fortune though. I refuse to look at it as something that has gone awry.

No soothsaying here. None of that arrogant thinking that we have full control over our lives.

But thinking of it as something fated to happen... I guess, that can be quite comforting.

I've been thrashed around by the flow. And though I still try to direct it, there's no other course of action but to just go with it.

Let things take their weird course.

Come, come! Your presence will make us very happy! VERY MANY HAPPINESS!!!

COME TO BIG SKY MIND, THIS FRIDAY, NOV. 30. Correction lang: Tickets purchased before the gig are P80, gate P100.

It's Wednesday now. And I haven't left this house since Tuesday last week. Of course, that's not to include the weekend I spent cooped up at Medical City where I watched reruns, and had the crook of my right arm purple-dotted and bruised from all the blood tests.

I haven't been this sick since I was in high school. And the weather then was as shitty as i felt. Here, it's a nice a day. So much to do. So much I want to do.

But I can't. At the risk of me keeling over on some sidewalk. Embarrassed beyond my wits.

I remember how my mother used to get so worried when I would get sick nearing the terms final exams. I realize now it wasn't because the sickness was something grave. But because it was always a sign that I had somehow worked myself to death - disregarding the responsibility I had for the things beyond my brain.

Of course, now, a mosquito brought it along. But that doesn't change the fact that I still obsess over work.

And now I can't do any. Still, it's a nice day out.

If anybody says that the recently held elections were relatively clean, and orderly - save for a few "anomalies" - hit them on the head for me. Hard. As in. Masakit. Hagulgol sakit.

Hit them even harder if they say, "Okay, fine. The elections weren't all clean and orderly. But mostly they were. And that's okay."

I seriously hope that I won't encounter such a conversation. Not so much because such would actually force me to become physical - - then again, if I do it's just like those midget boxing matches, strangely bizarre but drawing nonetheless.

I hope I won't encounter any person who thinks like that (about elections I mean, not midget boxing matches) only because it speaks a multitude of insults to the countless hours spent and the gallons of blood shed by the people who fought for freedom. Of course, not to say that we exactly know what freedom is.

But in any case, if at least one vote is tarnished in any way, the entire point of having elections is undermined. Ideally, each citizen is entitled to one vote. All equal before the law. All provided the same opportunity despite each inherent difference.

Saying that it's okay for elections to be generally clean and orderly, and not COMPLETELY clean and orderly is to say one vote is MORE EQUAL than another. George Orwell would probably agree. Where each person has the right to say how his/her society should be run, electoral anomalies of any form robs them of that right.

Never mind that cheating is just another way of arrogating power. People pining for more will always be a facet of human existence anyway. Elections should be completely clean and orderly because the power to vote is the one public good that should stay universal and un-tampered.

The right to free education? The right to free food, housing, shelter? The right to a free life?
Those things are contingent. But protecting the right to voice a person's thoughts in even as simple and truncated a way as casting a vote can make and maintain a fair and just society.

Okay, I take back what I said at the beginning. If in case you do engage a person in such a conversation, listen to them first. Let them air out their points and clarify those facets you don't understand - - and then hit them on the head.

How many days can you go without talking? Better, how many days can you go without talking to anybody - - literally keeping all your thoughts to yourself ?

I talk to myself a lot.
Heated debates on the feasibility of subversion.
Long strewn-out conversations over the nuances of songs.

Try small-talking with yourself.
And find out how much is really lost when you speak.
Even if there was an imaginary ear to hear you.
See that there's loss. At times, guilt over the smallness of words,
especially if they're directed to everybody and nobody in particular.

Try small-talking with yourself,
if only to see how much you really need to hold somebody else's hand.
Even if there will always be something unexplicated in crafty description.

I wish I could be more eloquent.

I seriously felt like a kid, waiting there in front.

You know the sensation? Where you're both impatient and composed? Marginally annoyed but overwhelmingly excited?

Giddy seems too trite a word. How do you describe exhiliration?

We're taught to make things concrete. To clarify, to explicate. Not to use big words. Not to leave things hanging.

But aren't things lost when reduced to setting, structure and context? Essentialized to the color and make of a shirt worn or to the blur of a million faces passing by? To the dominant impressions left by situation?

I felt happy. Maybe that's it. Regardless of the replicated hallmark moments such a word would conjure up.

I'd say happy. Regardless of its ambiguity. Maybe even because of it.

I've never seen it that way. That in some manner, a part of what I'm doing is some form of psycho self-mutilation.

All I'm really doing is hurting myself. Needlessly.

Maybe not needlessly. That implies that there can exist some things that have no significance whatsoever, which is based on the assumption that we alone bequeath significance.

Better to say, aimlessly. Undirected. Or at least that's what it seems to be.

Of course, maybe that's how it all should be done. Piece meal.

Small bites. Chewed well.

But what about big thoughts? Extravaganzas? That higher purpose?

Go to Google and type in quotation marks your name and then "likes to" (ex. "Tom likes to"). Type in the first ten things that come up and repost in your own blog.

1. Mikey likes to fight while Margalo likes to play tricks
2. Mikey likes to hang out with his friends or skateboard on weekends.
3. Mikey likes to make beats and rap.
4. Mikey likes to have a good time.
5. Mikey likes to run off with the bands money while they're onstage playing a show. (HAHAHAHAH!!! PANALO!!!!!)
6. Mikey likes to squirrel dive onto Shane's pillow at Devil's Head. (ano yung squirrel dive?)
7. Mikey likes to draw on my arm!
8. Mikey likes to make cakes and have everyone, including himself, sing Happy Birthday to Mikey.
9. Mikey likes to be wrapped in a cocoon for a couple of minutes. (Huhuhuh, ang emo ng dating.)
10. MIKEY LIKES TO EAT!! (TAMA!!! SINONG MAJUBA?!)

A few weeks ago, I started clearing out the shelves above my bed that held all of the music I had accumulated. In need of some cash, I had decided to sell some.

But then, it took on the form of a ritual, some suburbian cleansing ceremony. You'd have to first find the things you feel you could dispense with. But that also meant having to find the things that will never leave your heart.

At some instances, you'd come across something you had relegated to an accumulant of dust, at least up to that moment. Then by wiping, first with your hand, then with a damp washcloth, it's only natural, I guess, that questions start popping up. Questions of memory, of feeling.

You start asking the following:

Why the fuck do I have this?
Why did I even stop listening to this album?
Why did I even care?
Really, why do I still care?

You wish you had all the time to listen to all of the things that you had set aside. Immerse yourself in their every single detail. Hoping that somehow you would be able to find the reason they are/were there in the first place.

Sometimes, you remember - and then you put them back on the shelf above your bed. Piled up with the rest.

But then on other occasions, you find that some memories won't do anymore. That the stories that floated above and around your bed had travelled some distance. And it was far enough.

You gained some sense of your bearings. But ultimately you still had to lose some of your ground. And so some things had to fall on a completely different pile altogether.

Hopefully, you could do without those you set aside. And rest your head on the fact that more space has been freed up. But in the end, it's still completely different altogether. The space freed up will never replace the space once filled.

Your memories will never do without the ones you set aside.
- - - - - - - - -
( CD's For SALE!!!! )