Pounding The Keyboard

       Every January, a sister of mine (who works in a printing press) would bring home complimentary copies of things they had printed: calendars, diaries, planners, notebooks, you know, the kinds you buy whenever the year changes, so you could organize and fix your life. Just a few hours ago, she handed me some of these. They are mostly of high quality. Sometimes, she’d bring home quite a lot that we’d give away some of them, and the ones we kept, we would sometimes still not be able to use all of them.      I still have some planners here that dates back to 2023 and 2024. I don’t plan my life so I don’t use them. LOL. I also still have a few unused notebooks.      But years ago, I would often go to malls to buy a notebook, sometimes, I’d buy two, as I used it to store my story ideas or premises or even anecdotes. During the times when I was really active writing, I would always place a notebook (and a pen) beside me because ideas ...

       Last New Year’s Eve, at the height of revelry and the explosion of firecrackers, scared of all the noises around him and looking for a safe place to hide, our dog, a beagle, who had never ascended our stair to the second floor (except when we'd carry him) all his life (he’s now four years old), finally climbed it and conquered it and went to the second floor. We couldn’t blame him for being scared before because our stair is quite steep and there’s the danger of slipping and falling between steps; he would usually just take a step or two and then retreat. We cheered for him, of course, for he just showed that with determination and belief in yourself (and threats to your safety, lol), you can do anything.      He needed to sniff and search every nook and cranny of our second floor for hours before he calmed down. It took him another day to learn how to descend, and now, he’s an expert in climbing and descending stairs. Our stair, at least. Now...

  January, sick and tired You’ve been hanging on me You make me sad with your eyes You’re telling me lies Don't go, don't go...        It’s January, and as usual, like a lot of people, I don’t feel well: my nose is clogged, I have a cough and slight fever and a headache. Cold weather and allergies really are a terrible combination. Additional major culprit, I think, is the electric fan I need to keep on (which I point at my lower half body) because of the mosquitos. If you want to kill me or at least thoroughly incapacitate me, you just have to direct an electric fan straight to my face all night.      Last year, I was almost sick the whole January, even failing to attend a meeting crucial to my livelihood. Lol. I don’t lack vitamins and supplements, it’s just that my body is inexplicably susceptible to sickness every first month of the year. I don’t know, maybe my guardian angel is always hungover from too much revelry during Christma...

       Lots of people were already lighting firecrackers even weeks before Christmas, and one thing was already noticeable then: those firecrackers are louder, thus more dangerous. And it is even more alarming when you see that majority of peeps exploding them are kids (12-16 years old). So it was sort of inevitable that you’d hear somebody dying from it. And just yesterday, news of a boy dying and another one being critically injured after a firecracker exploded on them hit social media. Centuries ago, when I was a lot younger, we’d hoard firecrackers (the loudest ones) inside our house days before Christmas (they’d get expensive as New Year comes near), never caring that they were fire hazards, but decades ago, as I mature, I saw the pointlessness of it—and so we ditched firecrackers and just drank and ate during New Year’s eve.      This morning, Facebook warned me that somebody from Mindanao logged on to my Facebook. I live in Manila. Was it me ?...

        "These go to eleven..."           One of my favorite comedy movies is This is Spinal Tap (1984), a rock mockumentary that follows the American tour of Spinal Tap (a fictional heavy metal band). I’ve watched this film multiple times and I still find it funny each time. The film satirizes the “behavior and musical pretensions of rock bands.” This is Spinal Tap was critically acclaimed and is considered one of the funniest films ever, and was followed, 41 years later, by a sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues  (2025) with the same cast and writers, which is also very funny, though the first film, for me, is funnier.       The running joke about their drummers all dying and suffering bizarre deaths while with the band is hilarious. One of their drummers died when he choked on vomit… someone else’s vomit. Lol. And they weren’t able to find who owned the vomit. And their concert with the Stonehenge? Also...

       The nearest mall from our house is SM San Lazaro. No, I think it’s Lucky Chinatown in Divisoria. Okay, it’s probably a tie, but we frequent SM San Lazaro more. But whenever I was planning of thinking of buying a book, I had to go to a different, farther mall because there’s no Fully Booked in SM San Lazaro (Or Lucky Chinatown Mall for that matter, as National Bookstore has ceased to a be a real bookstore). Not anymore, because there’s now a Fully Booked store in SM San Lazaro. I was in the mall last Saturday and was surprised to see the store. It wasn’t there the last time I went to the mall, which was just around two weeks, I think.      Coincidentally, I just watched a Facebook reel by comedian Anthony Jeselnik, who’s known for his really dark humor, and I screenshotted some of the books he reviewed. I was thinking of buying a book or two from the review as a Christmas gift for myself, so I went inside Fully Booked, and showed one of the sto...