Stupid

Make sense out of this.

—

Neon the Catalyst no longer felt like she was responsible for any catalytic activities anymore, for she had unintentionally utilized several of her saved-up feelings—which she packed in nifty, purple bucket bags tucked safely in the depths of her emotional bank—on the wrong kind of investment. To have that much spent on something was very non-catalytic, especially since it was one of the catalyst’s ideals to never be involved or affected in any way. The said investment was a very bulky mass of appeal called Bigfoot.

Bigfoot, at first, was a platonic investment, for he was a wonderful addition to the collection of valuable knickknacks Neon liked to call Friends. Eventually, as the planet’s revolution went on, Bigfoot was positioned a notch higher in Friends, and almost bore the same title as Habano, who belonged to the eccentric sort and was a soul sister to Neon. Although, to say that the Bigfoot phenomenon had remained platonic within the span of nearly a year that he’d sauntered in her life was a massive lie.

While Habano was a safe investment, Bigfoot only wore the facade of safety. Underneath, he contained the very complex sort of clockwork that Neon was strangely attracted to. If the word ‘strangely’ was attached to a space before any word that described feelings closely related to love, it meant heaps of trouble. Neon had built a barrier to prevent the trouble from happening, but its intensity was that of an annihilating earthquake that it penetrated the chunky, concrete barrier with ease. The barrier’s elements were very identical to that of a human’s heart.

However, Bigfoot was codependent to a tiny sprite called Hitler, who garnered nearly all of his invested emotions. Neon knew this, of course, and decided to construct an effective filter to her attraction. Her filters were made out of a set of lovely niceties called Tens and Lans. The Lan set had been in her possession for almost four years before Bigfoot’s intervention. But then, to keep something that wasn’t even functioning very well for such a long time was bound to rot. And so, her filter began to deteriorate.

The Ten set was only semi-successful, because this set was the stubborn sort that liked to come and go at its own desire. Realizing she had only two faulty sets to sustain her filter, Neon became frustrated.

She sat on her favorite turtle-shaped chair, intently eyeing the Sudoku wallpaper plastered in front of her. Beneath her, nestling against her chair, were the empty purple bucket bags that were once filled with feelings supposedly reserved for the right investment.

The Bigfoot investment had seemed right. That’s why. But only because Neon chose to be blind to the Hitler baggage that came along to rid of the ache that always tugged at her whenever she was at Bigfoot’s company.

She snacked on revel bars secured in a wicker basket on her lap as she thought of all the stupid things she’d done to the Bigfoot investment, and sighed an exhausted sigh as her mental list of mistakes against Bigfoot continued to grow. Then, the list displayed one particular occurrence.

She had once handed Bigfoot a secret contract that presented the amount of her feelings, the ones that used to inhibit the purple bags by her feet. She didn’t know why she did it. Maybe because she had a tiny flicker of hope? But even the said contract had a losing proposition imprinted on it, and the minuscule specks of hope dusted on it had flown away.

As Neon recalled this, an inevitable surge of related events followed and played on her mind.

A partial Earth revolution after the contract anomaly, Bigfoot’s Hitler investment had turned shaky and came with it a strong force, infiltrating Neon’s barrier under Bigfoot’s supervision. Neon’s initial response was shock, but Hitler had with her a seed of rage and planted it on a small crack in the barrier. The rage grew—rage directed at the two investments for completely ruining her security.

But the rage didn’t last. Neon was too vulnerable to Bigfoot’s appeal and knew very little about Hitler, so she didn’t let the unwanted feeling dwell. But she continued to ache. Even more when Bigfoot and Hitler had sown good garments together, a representation of how strongly they felt for each other.

And even after another colossal complication between the two, when Bigfoot had decided to cut ties with his Hitler investment only a few sunrises after sowing good garments with her from when she targeted Neon’s barrier, Neon ached. Because the Bigfoot investment wasn’t hers to keep for long, and every being of him belonged to Hitler the sprite, who was once again sowing good garments with him. But this time, the garments were better.

All Neon could do was set Bigfoot aside and give him very little attention to save the marginal feelings she gathered for herself.

Even as her mind was busy formulating the right numbers to fill in the empty boxes in the grid on the Sudoku wallpaper across her, she thought of Bigfoot. Of how she had to let him go really soon before her hurt arose with the kind of ferocity she feared. He was a damn good investment, but spending her feelings on him was one of the dumbest things she’d done, for someone who considered herself fairly smart.

As she thought of all this, she munched on her revel bars and wondered about the kind of path the universe would sway her Bigfoot investment on.

Gloom

Beatrice lay on the rumpled sheets, her eyes cast on the ceiling, focused on empty space. Rain poured heavily outside her bedroom window, leaving blotches of perspiration on its glass partition. It had been raining for about half a week. She hated the rain. She hated the sound of its angry downpour resonating through the walls of her room and the way it dominated the atmosphere, begging to be heard.

Nothing seemed to overpower the blatant noise of the furious rain; not even the music from her speakers on max volume—blaring, ironically, Rhythm of the Rain by The Cascades.

Chill managed to penetrate the marginal spaces of the window jamb and brushed against her exposed skin, causing goose flesh to rise. She shifted to her side, reached for a blanket on the pile of laundry by the bedside table, and wrapped herself in it. She basked in its warmth and thought of slumber. Her eyes were slowly drooping.

Upon the boundary between sleep and consciousness, her thoughts wandered.

There had been times where she’d enjoyed the rain. Especially when she was little, when rainwater was safe enough to bathe in—like a cool, comforting shower shared with close friends, although completely clothed. How long had it been?

Before she could even recall some past memories to answer the question, she dozed off.

——————-

To emphasize the gloom.

Just feeling particularly gloomy today, since it’s been pouring all day and classes were suspended. Although I’m grateful for the cool weather, as it’s never been this way for a long time.

So, hi.

I haven’t posted anything in a while. I’d lost interest, and things have been hectic. I’ve been meaning to update you that I’m already in college and currently on my second semester, taking up civil engineering. But this post is initially made to express my gloom, and adding unrelated details to this footnote would give it a completely different mood. So I’m going to stop my rambling now. I will post stuff about recent happenings on another post.

Also, I stole the photo above off of Google images.

Dough

If I were given tons of cash, I’d spend them all on books and maybe an iPod touch. Really. Okay, and a bunch of shirts. But 95% would be on books.

Here is my to-read list on goodreads.

I don’t know why I’m writing about this. I just felt like it because I was browsing goodreads and started looking at Harry Potter box set prices on Amazon. Jen and I visited National Bookstore earlier and all the books we wanted were taunting us whilst settling inanimately in their shelves. I wanted so badly to buy The Book Thief (and several others), but there’s this hole in my pocket that takes a while to fill.

It’s pretty depressing to think about it. I made this big list of to-read books for the summer, and I’ve only read, like, less than a quarter of them. And not reading anything sucks.

Another thing, my imagination’s started working, but I need heaps of inspiration in order to get it to produce something that’s worth a story. Sucky imagination + mediocre vocabulary = nothing. I don’t know.

Sorry about this. I can’t get my thoughts sorted. They’re all jumbled. I’m just struggling to fish for sentences that are relevant and make sense. There are so many things happening in my head that it’s hard to even form one proper sentence.

Reasons

Okay, this post will appear stupid to most of you, but whatever. Also, this is incoherent. And maybe sorta gross. And also pretty pointless. And it has tons of comma splices.

There are times where I so badly wish I were a guy. The first and probably most common reason why is guys, they don’t bleed for five days and get all hormonal during the cycle.

Another is because they don’t have to do so much to look presentable. They don’t have to, like, I don’t know, think about ways to unfrizz their hair, or think about whether it’s a good idea to apply conditioner on a certain day or will just a shampoo do okay. Hair treatments are damn expensive for girls who aren’t naturally gifted with shiny hair, and if we wanna have nice hair, we spend dough to get our hair practically frizz-free for a short period of time until it grows back. I know guys have to get their haircut several times a month because their hair(s?) grow immensely fast, but I can live with that, as long as I can live my life not having to shave my pits and not caring about leg hair or facial hair or hair on wherever place on my body that isn’t my head.

And the clothes, they can like, just pick a shirt off their closet and some shorts or jeans and some sneakers or flip-flops or kicks, and they’re good to go. They don’t have to carry so many personal slash hygienic stuff around, so they can walk around the mall or elsewhere without a bag or some shit.

I know these are all general observations, and I’m probably just too lazy to attend to my body, to shave/wax/pluck all the hair that isn’t on my head and down there, to pick clothes with color coordination, to apply something on my face in order to look at least presentable. All these are probably based off my brother, and I just envy him sometimes how he showers for only like, five to ten minutes because he doesn’t have so much hair to wash. And how he gets dressed within about a minute or something.

But the prime reason why I sometimes wish so is because books written by men are far more interesting, especially written from the male perspective. Not that I’m saying books written by women aren’t interesting, and I’m probably only saying this because I haven’t read enough books to judge enough authors. I mean, Jane Austen and Harper Lee and Luisa May Alcott and Emily Dickinson and Anne Rice and Danielle Steel and all those well-known female writers had written great works, so women stand equally in the field of producing interesting work. (Although I haven’t read the works of half of the authors I mentioned above, but since they’re positively famous, it’s automatic that they produce good material.)

And one thing, girls can get pretty sappy and get all dramatic. It sucks sometimes. I don’t know what goes through guys’ minds but they don’t look like they’re easily occupied by their emotions. Except, maybe, anger and contempt, which eventually leads them to land a fist on some other guy’s face and stuff.

Maybe I’m just saying shit, but I don’t know. It’s one of those nights.

I know what you’re thinking: be careful what you wish for and all that jazz.

But well, it’s not that I really wish to be a guy. Being a girl is nice. God made me a girl for a reason. I mean, I appreciate the sexuality I was born with, and I’m happy to embrace the hormonal fits I sometimes encounter. It’s nice to ogle at good-looking guys from afar or from my computer screen. And it’s nice to be able to open up and not feel metaphorically gay about it.

Hell, it’s nice to even harness like, long-term crushes on unattainable guys that last at least two or more years. Even though this is sort of masochistic, especially when the said crush has a girlfriend, and it’s basically my part-time job to resent the girlfriend and think ill toward her and sob over the fact that the said crush barely acknowledged my existence. But whatever.

Sometimes I just find guys slightly, I don’t know, curious.

Underground

Warning: it’s dull and lacks description.

I’ve been pretty pessimistic these past days, so I’m posting something that doesn’t contain any form of negativity or whatever. If you’ve read my previous posts, you will know about my little escape to Palawan, NSPC, and all that.

Uhh, I’m not really good at giving chronological accounts when it comes to travelling because there are so many things to talk about and so many things to remember. I’m not good at expressing my appreciation toward nature because, well, I don’t know. It’s difficult to organize memories and write about them. But I’m gonna try. Please bear with the inconsistency.

Puerto Princesa is a nice city; it has friendly locals and ubiquitous tricycles; it’s law-abiding, eco-friendly, etc. And it’s swarming with tourists—presumably because it homes one of the new seven wonders.

I stayed there a week. During our first few days, Ma’am Suzanne, Abi, and I were too busy fussing about the NSPC, so we didn’t get the chance to explore and all. There were many nice places—museums, parks, cathedrals, etc.

We went island-hopping in Honda Bay. But the main attraction was the Puerto Princesa Underground River—which was a two-hour ride away from where we stayed. It was worth it.

(Inserting a photo of me and company on our way to the river.)

My parents (the ones occupying the back row), Abi's little brother, me, Abi, her sister's fiancé, and her sister.

And here's a photo of the entrance.

It’s hard to formulate a description for the insides of the cave, as it’s so intricate, so you might wanna get a ticket to Palawan and see for yourself. Plus, it was dark, with only one flashlight to guide our way as we went deeper inside.

There were so many things we could’ve done, though. There’s the Iwahig Firefly Watching, the Dolphin Watch, El Nido, and tons of other things. But most of them were far and expensive, and our summer budget could only take us so far.

Oh, and if you wanna know about the results of the NSPC, Abi and I both lost. We didn’t place in any of the individual events we were assigned to. Abi and her group obtained the 7th place in Collaborative Writing, though. It’s this activity where seven (?) campus journalists collaborate to write a tabloid.

I got pretty homesick. I know it’s the summer and I’m supposed to enjoy and whatnot, but I wasn’t in my best of moods. But I managed. It seemed like a waste dwelling on negativity in a beautiful place that had a lot to offer.

Two days ago, after several excruciating hours of having my ass glued to one of the airport’s waiting chairs, I finally arrived home.

***

Oh, and one more thing:

Here lies my career as a novelist for failing to describe basically anything.

Summer

Lo and behold! Inserting some random photo of me and my family (excluding my mom, who was taking the picture) looking all happy and summery.

In this post, I am going to state what I’ve so far achieved during the first month of summer, discuss about book series (Harry Potter, specifically), and rant about some things.

Okay, so I’ve just gotten home from Boracay with my family, and tomorrow I’ll be flying again, off to Palawan for this journalism contest called NSPC. Expectedly, I’d gotten at least a shade darker, with pale lines on my skin that serve as my summer adventure’s markers. I’m not really gonna give a review on Boracay because almost everybody already knows about its splendor and whatnot. I’m neutral toward it, mostly because the shores were infested with algae that, when excessively clumped together, emitted a strong stench. So I wasn’t too keen on bathing myself in its waters and all, which is primarily the reason why we even went there. Plus, the sun was searing.

I love beaches, really, but I’m not particularly fond of huge groups of people, and Boracay was flooding with people. The amount of people in a certain area can be likened to the amount of ants swarming in a displayed bowl of sugar. But, well, it’s understandable. It’s the holidays, the summer, and the island’s extra popular. It’s beautiful and there are tons of foreign people—enough to outnumber the locals—sauntering on the sand, flaunting their beach bodies in their tiny bikinis and trunks and board shorts, looking tan and blissful. Enjoying the sun. All that.

I can easily say that I felt sort of far out, like I’m not part of the crowd or whatever. I didn’t have balls to expose my body with its obvious lack of chest and rather noticable belly. No way. We just walked around a lot, making my calves all solid and bulky. And most of the time I just curled up in our room, reading Harry Potter through my phone’s e-book/PDF reader because I’m such a bore.

I thought I would’ve enjoyed it more if I were richer, ’cause there were tons of expensive food I felt the need to taste but was unable to because it was a financially struggling endeavor.

And there’s Harry Potter. When school ended, I made this list of all the books I plan to read before college starts, and most of them are book series because I used to dislike them and I wanted to know why people were so into them. So I started with The Hunger Games, because my best friend made me read it and lent me the book before I even asked, so I had no choice. And because I get easily attached, which I hate, I fell in love with it.

Now, I’m reading Harry Potter (shoot me now for not reading it sooner, when the hype has died down), and I’m already on the fifth book. And, well, I’m just as in love with it as I used to be with The Hunger Games. And, gosh, why didn’t I start reading it way back, when there were still movies to look forward to even when the series was over? I regret being stubborn on feeling indifferent toward book series. I had all these stupid assumptions and I was afraid of attachment. I love The Hunger Games and Harry Potter equally. Maybe the latter a little more. Then I’m going to watch the movies after I finish the series.

Another thing, I don’t know what to think about myself anymore. I feel uninteresting, it’s obvious with my posts. And I’m not being all angsty and teenagery and all. I just really think so. I can barely maintain a flowing conversation with anyone, even with my closest friends. Our interests don’t clash. And when I finally know someone who shares the same interests as I do, I space out. I don’t know. I’m neutral, I guess. Some guy is funny and the other is mean and the other is weird and the other is deep. But I don’t display enough emotion on a certain field to be called one of those. I’m a neutral person, if that’s a fitting adjective. I am nowhere near interesting or dull. Or maybe I’m dull. I’ve never had someone say something frank about me, I think. Or maybe I just closed my ears. I don’t know.

Caesar Flickerman

When I am idle, my feelings toward my fictional obsessions become stronger and doing anything against them only intensifies this so I’ll just make a blog post.

This is Caesar Flickerman, as my title boldly states, played by Stanley Tucci. And I think he is the most perfectly cast character among all others.

Stealing graphics from tumblr because I can’t make my own.

Doesn’t he have great teeth? If you disagree, you have no brain.

There’s also this smile he does in the beginning of his segments. WHICH I CAN’T POST BECAUSE GIFs REFUSE TO MOVE FOR SOME REASON. So I’ll just post a link.

Here’s what I’m talking about.

Oh maaaaaan.

This guy is so versatile. He was the mad pedophilic murderer in Lovely Bones, this dude in Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep’s husband in Julie & Julia, Emma Stone’s dad in Easy A, this gay dude in Burlesque, and some guy in several other movies I have yet to see.

Credits to those who own all the photos.