Pounding The Keyboard

“All is quiet on New Year's Day A world in white gets underway I want to be with you Be with you night and day Nothing changes on New Year's Day On New Year's Day…”                      New Year’s Day, U2             Just like that and Christmas is over and done with, disappointing a lot of people who want a longer Christmas celebration. It is not a secret that a lot of people are addicted not to the concept and message   of Christmas itself but the revelry that comes with it.   In fact, even those who don’t believe in Jesus are excited much with Christmas.        But when I was younger (elementary years to more than a decade ago), I was more excited with the prospect of celebrating New Year than Christmas— because of firecrackers. New Year would still be hours away then but we’d already be busily and happily exploding powerful firecrackers—while drinking.   Yes, the danger in those twin activities always inexplicably escaped us during those times.

 "And one day we will die And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea But for now we are young Let us lay in the sun And count every beautiful thing we can see Love to be in the arms of all I'm keeping here with me..."                                        -- In The Aeroplane Over The Sea                                             by Neutral Milk Hotel         I was entering the rest room of a mall the other day when suddenly, I heard a soft thud behind me. When I looked back, I saw that a man in shades, and probably in his forties, hit the wall near the door of the rest room—he was blind and he was alone.        I watched him grope his way towards a urinal and hit the person already standing in front of it. He chuckled, apologized and moved on towards the next urinal.        On his way outside, he hit the wall again as he was trying to walk like a normal man, he   again chuckled, fixed his dark glasses and walked around it. He pol

       A friend of mine who wants to be a writer is thinking of creating an account on Wattpad and put his short stories there and hes’ planning on using a pen name—he’s been whacking his brains for days and he hasn’t come up with one.          “Is William Shakesfear good?” he asked me.        “Nah,   I don’t think so,” I said.        “But I’m writing horror stories, tales that will make people shake with fear.”        “Regardless.”        I asked him why the need for a pen name, and he couldn’t really articulate on it; some kind of writer, my friend is.        So why do some writers use pen names? I asked the tambays here and this is what they told me: aside from the fact that some publishers require it for marketing purposes, some writers use pseudonyms because they think that their real names aren’t ‘literary’ enough (for example, Manny Mayweather seems to belong to a boxing ring, not in literature. Nhicolas Pecpec, a Filipino name, is a bit embarr

                They were at the cemetery to tend and visit their departed beloveds’ graves. All Saints’ Day was still three days away, so the cemetery still wasn’t crowded. While at the graves, they were sort of waiting for someone to approach them—but he was nowhere to be seen.        Flashback to four years ago,   2011, while they were in the same graves, around eight in the morning, a day before Halloween, and two days before Undas, a shabby boy of around 11 years old, approached them and made small talk with them. He said he lived inside the cemetery, pointing to a nearby shoddy shanty which was built around an abandoned tomb.        They gave him what they were eating and he stayed and chatted with them. He told them he was happy they  were nice to him. They gave him some money—he wasn’t asking for any—before they left and he promised to take care of the flowers  they left atop the graves and not let some scoundrels steal it.        When they came back the ne

       We were at the mall the other day, and me and my niece were whiling away the time inside a game area waiting for our companions. We were watching a cute chubby bespectacled teenager try her luck at the claw machine, she was already on her 14 th try,   I think, and my niece had given up on her.        “That machine is obviously fixed,” said my niece. “The end of the world has a better chance of happening today than on her getting that stuffed toy.”        I agreed with her, the machine was rigged and it was a common knowledge—but I told her that the teenager will most likely win on her 14 th or 15 th try, rigged machine or not.        “Naah!” exclaimed my niece,who was an engineering freshman. “Machine is fixed, it will only continue to break her heart.”        But the teenager did win on her 15 th try and finally hooked the Garfield stuffed toy she had been eyeing.        “Nice,” my niece smiled. “How did you guess she was going to win?”