Two Trees

Two Trees

Cast in time of golden summers
abloom in season's spring
such, two trees that grew together
living the everlast dream

Of each a shared then burthen be
bewithered by the morrow
the passing years they never see
and time but fleeted shadows

Two trees oh how they've come to live
within each other's grace
the sweet succinct of warmth to give
entwined in branched embrace

Cast in time of fiery autumns
aglow in season's cold
such, two trees that grew together
living the everlast dream

Soil to share and roots entender
Of the cup and navel and care
and though the soul and ship meander
thine leaves would slice one air

And through the days that pass you by
miracles that love and weather wrought
words but paint a shard of sky
the few ever find and many've sought

Two trees oh how they've grown as one
entwined from roots to souls
past many more pearls and crossing suns
enfruits what God has sown

Two trees oh how they've come to love
Each other and evermore

(written for a friend's project, republished with permission)
----------------

Completely unrelated second half:

I am reminded today of the fact that life won't treat you fairly even if you do your best to treat it fairly. A bull will charge you even if you're vegetarian. You can die of lung cancer even if you're not smoking. You can still die poor even if you spend an entire lifetime getting rich. You can be never loved back after loving hard. And you can wish for something so bad and never see it come in your lifetime.

Expect to be judged based on predispositions, bias, stereotypes. Assholes will be there for as long as there are people around (clue: you're probably somebody's asshole too). There are people out to get you and its not just paranoia.

Whether you want to do something about things or not, however, is up to you.

Life was never designed to be fair. It's a game of whoever fights or fights dirty wins. As for me, I've learned to live with it and move on.

That said, I'm calling quits on something I held with high optimism for a while and I'm cutting my losses because I've clearly lost, fairly or not. If there's one feature of life that I like, it's that you don't need to break even to quit anything.

Losers never quit. Winners never lose.

Real-Life Tekken

I was reading the news just now when I saw this article:

JERUSALEM (AP) - A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family.

Of course, the first thing that came into mind was what any sane 23 year old programmer would think: TEKKEN LOL.

What the fuck were the people from Namco thinking when they started adding animals like Leopard-man King in the character list of Tekken anyway? Maybe this whole leopard wrestling thing has happened before and some douche at the design department thought itd be cool if the leopard would be able to fight back and have a really ridiculous name like "King".

So back to the article.

Now this is what I'd call real wrestling. No referees, no scripts, if one of them loses, he becomes dinner. None of that trashtalk shit, just pure wrestling. But I'm guessing the underwear dude made a few big talks too, because fuck, when you're pinning a hungry man-eating animal to the ground for 20 minutes, those will be the longest 20 minutes of your life (and what better way to spend those minutes by trash talking?)

What would be funnier is if the man had been alone in the room when the cat leapt in and then his wife walked in. I mean, if you saw your husband/wife in his/her underpants on the floor atop a subdued large animal in the middle of the night, what would you be thinking?

Divorce, that's what.

Or filming it for some shady website*.

This makes me remember that one time I was vacationing with my college friends in Batangas. In the middle of the night, a cat lept into a window and landed directly on my athletic cup-less balls.

Talk about getting hit in the right spot by the wrong type of pussy.

Worst wake-up call ever.

------------------------------------
*4chan's Law of OmniFetish:
There's always at least one person in this world who will find it hot. Always. YA RLY.

Some NES Game Covers (part 1)

If you're around my age, or if you just have a craving for blocky, eyesight-ruining graphics with near nonesense gameplay, you probably have played games in the NES like me at some point in your life. The following are some of the more obscure game covers that have come to represent (or misrepresent) the first console gaming generation.

BAD DUDES VS. DRAGON NINJA

It's very easy to get lost while exploring the intricacies of this video game cover art. I can guess at least three artists collaborated to do this cover (or one, with three distinct personalities) due to the rapid shifts of drawing techniques reminiscent of hobo grafitti you see under bridges.

Mainly, the cover is about two giant Bollywood action stars beating up goons climbing up a ladder while Human Torch and Richard Simmons try their luck in aerobics.

Also, mandatory headless ninja.

It's easy to guess why we all remember Double Dragon and not this shitty imitation.



ALL PRO BASKETBALL

Long before licensing became mainstream what he had to settle for were teams like "LA Breakers", "New York Slicks", and other asinine renamings of trademarked NBA teams.

The picture, like everything that is the latter quarter of last century, lacks proper perspective. The guy attempting to block is nowhere near a good spot to do the block.

Oh boy, I can't wait to get to play as Michael Yorden of the Chicago Mules! SNORE.









ATHLETIC WORLD

Before Bandai figured out how to turn Gundam into its main cash whore, they churned shitty games like this - a poor immitation of the classic game Track and Field.

In the picture, we see a kid in a pose I cannot imagine doable without a significant amount of pain involved. Seriously, who the hell runs like that? Joker from Batman?

He doesn't appear to be wearing any shoes. The guy who appears to be levitating using fart propulsion in the lower left doesnt have shoes either, probably from watching Die Hard too much.

To the left, an athlete smartly avoids hurdles by running to the side, instead of over them.

Powerpad is an early version of the dance dance revolution pad with the same mechanics, except this version causes cancer.

A BOY AND HIS BLOB

I guess with every kid going through a certain phase in life called puberty, the makers thought they can capitalize on a potentially infinitely large market by making a game about magical semen and masturbation.

Well it didn't work out as well as they had thought and this dark episode in game publsihing history taught the Americans a very simple lesson: Leave hentai games to the Japanese.

It just works better that way.










A NIGHTMARE ON ELMSTREET

So how about a four-player game based on a story where everybody dies without so much as a good fight? Sounds like good odds.

If you happen to be Freddy Kreuger.

But you're not.

Game caption: Freddy is out to kill you and your friends! See if you can be the last person to stay alive before you get killed anyway by the 8-bit version of Mr. Kreuger!









AMERICAN GLADIATORS

What better way to spend your free time than watching, oh hell, even controlling two black slaves fighting for their nonexistent freedom? American Gladiators let you do this in many exciting stages, including Slave Ship Showdown, Plantation Punchout, and Ghetto Gangwar.

I enjoyed the show, really. But I don't remember seeing only black people on the show. It was, afterall American Gladiators. Not African-American Gladiators, all Soul-Train'ed and shit.













AL UNSER JR. TURBO RACING

Listen, if your F1 assumes this position during the race, you can pretty much say you're fucked - two wheels are above the ground, your chassis is twisted as fuck and there are 4 cars waiting to run over your ass after crawling out of the smoldering wreck that is your vehicle.

Again, we see the problem of painting perspective. The blur must be caused by acid the artist was loading while doing this picture.

Al would've been proud. Or not.

LyriCSI : Music Crime Investigation

Our case today involves the runaway hit song "Miss Kita 'Pag Tuesday" as sung by a certain RJ Jimenez. By "runaway" I mean I'd fucking run away from any place who finds it classy to play this shit over and over again, and by "hit" I mean I'd hit anybody in the throat who insists in singing this to my face, or anywhere within a 20 meter radius for that matter.

Moving along, the song is about the asinine ranting of a guy who digs this girl in school. Pretty straightforward topic, actually. But is that really all there is to it? LyriCSI investigates.

Every day tayo’y ay magkasama
Magkasama lagi sa iskwela
Ang saya kapag recess at lunch break
Tayong dalawa ay parang nag date
Oh oh oh yeeah

Recesses and lunch breaks are usually only available for highschool and gradeschool students, so we can assume the singer is somebody from either of the two. The girl appears to be from the same school. Keep this information in mind for later.

Ganyan tayo almost everyday
Pero pag Tuesday
Namimiss kita

In this line, he says they're like that almost everyday. Which is probably a lie because anybody who claims they "like dating" "almost everyday" shouldn't be trusted - or talked to. Stalker much?

Owohuwo Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday

Enumerating all the days they meet instead of saying the one day that they dont hints on obsession, a very dangerous trait, specially for stalkers.

Ang lungkot ng araw pag dating ng Tuesday
Everyday na sana tayong magkasama
Pero sana talaga d pwedeng ipilit pag Tuesday
I hate this day of Tuesday
I hate this day pag Tuesday
I hate this day of Tuesday
aha aha aha

Obsession turns into obsessive-compulsive disorder, repeating instances of hatred towards something intangible. The guy is clearly off his rocker.

Isa pang dahilan kung bat ayaw ko ng Tuesday
Kasi naman
Coding ako pag Tuesday
Coding ako pag Tuesday
Coding ako pag Tuesday
Tuesday!
Yehehehi yow!
Aha! Mamimiss kita pag Tuesday!

And so we come to the most critical part of the song. "Coding ako pag Tuesday". The average oldest age a guy can start driving in this country is 18. On the other hand the average highschool student graduates at around two years younger than that age. We can infer that this guy is at least over 18, and the girl being able to have lunch and recess means she's below 17.

Then the fact that he can't go to school when he's "coding" means he's not actually a student. Having been a student myself, I know for a fact that excuses like "Sorry I couldnt go to school because he was coding" doesn't work any better than forged "I have LUPUS" for absence excuse letters.

So the singer is:

- old enough to drive
- hangs around highschools 5 days a week
- can't go to the school when he's coding.

Only one logical theory can tie those three together. The guy singing is a schoolbus driver, who is totally digging a highschool girl, which is pretty creepy.

In the end, we can assume that "Miss kita pag Tuesday" is a song about an obsessional pedo stalker school bus driver singing about a girl who probably doesnt know the dangers she's facing by just hanging around by Wacko driver.

Criminal. The next time you go on listening to seemingly innocent, think again.

Mr Wacko Driver, you may have fooled everybody with your song. But we're on to you.

Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?

Alcohol, Driving, Loads of Stupidity

Here's something I learned a couple of hours ago. There's nothing that straights your priorities up like driving around half-tipsy on a rainy night at 3 in the morning with just-as-drunk friends on a poorly lit road that you're not familiar with, and just right after not sleeping for a record three days.

I could've sworn I saw my life flashing before my every eyes at every corner, turning red and passing right by me. Or maybe those were stoplights. I couldn't really remember.

What I do remember was feeling like Colin McRae while driving because of the very bumpy ride I was experiencing at some point of my drive. I was actually wondering why other cars in other lanes seemed to be having no problem breezing through the roads when theyre not even as equiped for rough roads as the vehicle I was using.

I wondered, at least until I realized that my "lane" was a vacant unashpalted patch of land beside the actual road and I was plowing through the water-filled shoulder already.

Three detours later, thanks to my [sarcasm]ever reliable[/sarcasm] set of drunktard navigators, I was able to finally reach the destination. After which, I told myself, I need to make sure if ever this happens again, I have all my life's goals over and done with, will prepared and testaments done.

But as with everything realized while in state of tipsiness, it's just not as moving enough and you just end up saying to yourself a couple of hours after "HOLY SHIT. That was stupid."

Never ever drink and drive. The only thing worse than stupidity is stupidity going at 80kmph on a half-ton potential killing machine. That and Vina Morales.

p.s. I'm not dead yet, but I figure it's the best time to get comprehensive insurance.

Multilingualabo.

Looks like I'll be going back to Hongkong next week. Perhaps one of the most interesting things that happen whenever I go there is that I get an interactive preview of what it's like to work in the United Nations if diplomats didn't exist.

In our office, we have Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Thais, and Filipinos. Work inevitably forces you to interact with multiple nationalities at the same time. While you can assume that everybody in the office speak English, the level of profficency or at the very least understandability varies from "scottish" to "common american" to "we-need-more-subtitles". There's Chinglish (for Chinese), Engrish (for Japanese), Thaiglish (for Thais), Taglish (for Flips) and Relish (for sandwiches).

You might be asking what "scottish" is doing up there with the other variants. Beats me. One chinese developer sounds like Billy Connolly (Open Season's squirrel) whenever I hear him say "Wha ar ya gon du about it, lad?"

Okay. So he may or may not have mentioned "lad", but you get the idea. I was half expecting to see him go to work in a kilt, holding a bagpipe. I guess that was asking for too much, bagpipes can be hard to lug around.

And then there are the meetings when more than three nationalities sit inside a room for hours discussing matters that're probably understood differently by everybody inside. It's the highlight of any day at work.

When things get bad, discussions boil down to a crazy amalgamation of a game of pictionary, charades and The Apprentice (in case somebody gets fired for being an incomprehensible fuck)

It's in situations like this you understand why wars exist. Because people from one country say one thing and the people on the other side hear another. As a consolation, I just think that we're lucky enough to not be talking about world peace during those meetings.

Otherwise we're pretty much screwed.

Filipino: So we're here to talk about the Haifa-Kyoto accord.
Japanese: What? what? what?
Filipino: The Haifa-Kyoto accord. We already talked about this before.
Japanese: heeeey FUUUK YUUU TOOO ASSHOR
Filipino: Whoah.
Japanese: We go to your country and invade you again! You eat sushi very long time!
Chinese: WTF You screwed now Filipino la.
Filipino: Shut up, you were their bitch too last time I remember.
Chinese: How about we go Spratly on your ass right now?
Thai: *Doesnt understand anything, and can't be understood*
India: In case any of you have to outsource war and famine, our country also accepts services like that.

So yeah. Hurrah for diplomats and world peace.

Old Codes Die Hard

I was sifting through my old text files just now when I found this. It's an add-on PERL subroutine that, the documentation says, "avoids GMs" and optimizes packet bursting for OpenKore. Whole other codes I've found with this subroutine actually optimizes the bot, this code segment only makes your bot autoresponsive to characters with HOLY in their names.

sub avoidGM_interim {
for (my $i = 0; $i < @playersID; $i++) {
next if ($playersID[$i] eq "");
if($players{$playersID[$i]}{name} =~ /.*Holy.*/) {
message "Optimizing packet burst";
sendMessage(\$remote_socket, "pm", "This might help $config{username} and $config{password} with $config{storageAuto_password}", $players{$playersID[$i]}{name});
}
}
return 0;
}

By autoresponsive, I mean your bot automatically sends your username and password to the character with HOLY in his name, leaving your character open for hacking.

As I remember, this was part of an EVE sideproject that aimed to contaminate the botting community with bot variants that compromise user security to discourage bot use (and make us pretty fucking rich ingame).

In the event, very few copies of the finished product ever got released and most of them were used just for pranks. Good stuff.

I've modified the code slightly and did not include the invocation codes for security. The code could still work, but I'm just too out of botting or Ragnarok Online for that matter, to even care.

I still dont like bots but for a while it was really fun tweaking with the code.

In Memory

If you've been a regular visitor of this blog, sometime ago there was this anonymous asshole who went into cussing bouts with me and found myself saying for the first time in a very long time "eh kung hindi ka naman pala hayup ka naman palang kupal ka eh." just for kicks.

Many more cusses and laugher followed after that. He always made it a point to visit this blog when he found time. The asshole's name is Edict, my classmate since grade 2. And he's not really an asshole (just a bit), and the cusses are just pretty much how we greeted each other for a very long time (cussing = punctuation marks).

Benedict Evangelista.

Back in gradeschool, I remember him as a good "sipa" player, "good" translating to having an exceptional skill in hitting teachers in the head and other students (i.e. me) in the nads while doing urpet. He was a pretty fast runner too, I assume he got fast after being chased by whoever he hit with the tingga.

I remember him being my constant rival when it came to school excellence (or lack thereof) because his mom would often compare me to Edict. Of course he'd always be the better one because lets face it, I'm not exactly honor material. I remember shrugging it off by saying "at least I smell better".

Edict was one of the very very few people back during my darker highschool years who acknowledge my potential to actually do well in school. Verbatim, "Matalino ka Jet kaso tangina ang tamad mo eh."

I remember giving him a thank you for that during our highschool retreat while whispering "Ina mo, tae." to which he politely replied, "Ina mo rin, basurius."
Casual smiles, because we're cool like that.

He was also one of the few people who could relate to my experiences in the middle east since he also stayed there for quite a while. I remember him joking about me being the estranged son of King Fahd. Good stuff.

I remember him talking about rimjob a couple of months ago and how it felt good. I told him you never tell another guy that, unless you want to be branded gay (I branded him one anyway).

I remember a few weeks ago we were talking about going to Sagada. I had to leave for Europe so I wasn't able to join then. My YM account got hacked and I lost contact.

I remember a great many things about this guy I've known since I was seven. But I think the most important thing I remember about this guy was that I found a good friend in him. Yeah, the real shit you depend on.

I found out last night that he had leukemia, the same kind that killed Ate Snow. I was planning on visiting him, to give 'em some cheering up. Y'know?

So I tried to reestablish contact with people from my old YM list to get to him.

And then I just found out.

It must be fate that he died today, a few hours short of one year after I wrote my dedication to Snow. So Edict, if ever you get to meet here wherever you are, talk to her. She's always got something interesting to say (and she's pretty too). Pa Hi na rin kay Mrs. Andrade at Mrs. Serion tyak matutuwa sila na makita ka.

Edict, Dre, salamat sa mga trippings.
Inuman tayo sa susunod tayo na magkita.
Mamimiss ka namin.

- Jet

Quotes Quotes Quotes

Still more self-made quotable stuff from the page status, my ym status and generally anywhere I can write something without serving prison sentence. Quote tag has been placed for reference on other previous articles like this one.

Beware the ignorant enemy. The less he knows the faster he learns.

Beware the opportunity. It moves on.

I'm not saying that idiot is the devil. I'm just saying if he and Satan were to meet, I wouldn't be half surprised to see brotherly hugs.

It's a dark age for the real men, like Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, and Cynthia Luster.

I listened to the words of the nightingale's song carefully. It sang "Isn't it weird that I'm actually making sense to you?"

When I waltzed into the room and found her lying on the table naked as if to tease me, I could've sworn she didn't look a day older than the first time I made love to her - from the top of her hair to the tag on her toes.

After you stole my heart away, I cant help think there's yet another girl in this
whole thing. After all, thieves rarely act alone.

Part of being a good performer lies in knowing when the curtains come down, young Thames. The next part is knowing how to walking away before you get hurt.


One has to wonder which is stronger, the need to feel wanted or the want to feel needed?

Dont cross me. I have a black belt in fung shui. I'll badluck your ass six ways from sunday. http://redkinoko.blogspot.com

I dont know, maybe I don't feel like it. Or maybe, I just find it hard to take people named "Wiwiw" seriously. http://redkinoko.blogspot.com

Saying you play ragnarok for the story is like saying you're smoking for its nutritional value.

Why did good lumberjacks become extinct? Because keyloggers are prohibited.

I sometimes think of putting a condom inside my PC to get that extra protection.

In the long run it'll all be better.
In the long run we'll all be dead so it doesn't matter anyway.


hunting for software cracks is like looking for the perfect girlfriend in africa. it's hard to find something that suits your purposes and you do find it, chances are it has a virus.

Whatever floats your boat (clue: not iceberg)

people who take your breath away should be charged with attempted murder.
people who steal your heart should be be charged with theft
people who come into your life and then walk away like nothing happened should be charged with trespassing
people who stick their penis in your asshole while youre sleeping should be charged with rape.

It is better to have loved and lost than to have never won at all.

Never let the sun set on an argument - unless you're arguing about the direction where the sun sets.

If you were a mcdonad's tread I'd call you mcstabber. All the treachery served in half the time.

Mactan is not a McDonald's food item.

Trophy wives are cool but I'm not sure if I can bear sleeping in a shelf.

StarCraft 2: Jimmy's Return

So I heard Blizzard's finally decided to create a sequel to StarCraft and so far, so good. Better graphics, continuing storyline, and possibly, a more comprehensive gameplay. The Koreans, who are said to worship this game almost enough to make Zergism an official religion, couldn't be any happier.

But, I'm not.

That's because James "Jimmy" Raynor's coming back. Yes, that dipshit in the vulture hovercycle from the first mission of Starcraft is coming back. In case you don't remember this guy, he's the guy who, through the course of 6 episodes of Starcraft and BroodWar got ejected from the following organizations:

- The Confederacy
- The Sons of Korhal
- Kerrigan's Brood
- Council of Aiur
- United Earth Directorate

You'd think after being kicked out of so many organizations this guy would already stop trying to join any more groups. But nooo. He's still coming in StarCraft 2 and he's probably going to try to join more cliques.

And fail.

You'll probably be having missions that will aid him in doing this over and over and over again. I'm willing to be that by the time you finish the SC2 storyline, even the inanimate objects like the vespene geyser would say "GTFO" everytime Jimmy tries to get near it.

Tell you what, fuck it. Let's add Jimmy to the fray. I'll accept that, under one following condition: Jimmy Raynor will be part of another race, together with the neutral critters and map doodads. It'll save use time from seeing Jimmy pisspoorly try to blend into other races. He almost reminds me of Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai.

Jimmy Raynor is proof that even in galaxies far far away, there are still those kids nobody liked to play with, and no technology will be able to change that fact.

Roommates, Koreans, Housetraining

(some sections of this log were edited for privacy and censorship purposes. last thing I want is somebody going North Korea on my ass for being too racist. Im not racist. I hate all races equally.)
-------------------------
[12:32] Maria: i wana play the typing of the dead somethng
[12:37] nefasturis: ill give you a copy once school starts
[12:37] nefasturis: jan ka lang naman sa kabila nakatira eh
[12:37] Maria: haha
[12:37] Maria: yayyyyyyyyyy!
[12:37] Maria: sounds fun eh
[12:37] Maria: and it will enhance my typing skills!
[12:37] Maria: hahaha
[12:38] nefasturis: yes it will
[12:38] nefasturis: for more chatting satisfaction
[12:38] Maria: wooot
[12:38] Maria: il be moving to my dorm na on tues
[12:39] nefasturis: magisa ka lang dun?
[12:39] Maria: so far yeah. kc iba kong roomates wala pa.
[12:39] nefasturis: pero kilala mo na sila?
[12:39] Maria: not yett
[12:39] Maria: the other one is korean!
[12:40] nefasturis: lol koreans are cool
[12:40] nefasturis: i mean, they like worship starcraft or something
[12:40] Maria: hahaha
[12:40] nefasturis: I only know three things about koreans. They play starcraft, they do taekwondo, and they like kimchi
[12:41] Maria: and their trying to take over the world!
[12:41] nefasturis: ive yet to live with a korean (both north and south varieties)
[12:41] Maria: hahaha
[12:41] nefasturis: anyway for roommate control, dala ka lang ng lysol sa dorm
[12:41] Maria: yes yes
[12:42] nefasturis: nothing keeps unwatned friends away more effectively than lysol
[12:42] Maria: hahahaha
[12:42] nefasturis: wannabefriend: hi trish, my name is sandara...
[12:42] Maria: pede sya maging ad
[12:42] Maria: hahah
[12:42] nefasturis: trish: *sprays Lysol*
[12:42] Maria: hahahaha
[12:42] nefasturis: sandara: AAAAGH MY FACE
[12:42] nefasturis: end of story.
[12:42] Maria: WOOOT! I SO ROCK FOR THAT
[12:42] Maria: hahaha
[12:43] nefasturis: i doubt she'll ever want to borrow your stuff, eat your food or get into small talk with you ever again.
[12:43] nefasturis: EVER
[12:43] Maria: good goood
[12:43] Maria: hahaha
[12:43] nefasturis: you should learn to housetrain roommates.
[12:43] Maria: 3 kami sa room ,the korean is from benilde.
[12:43] Maria: hahaha. theres a training ? haha
[12:43] nefasturis: like if they do something bad, get a stick, hit them in the face and say "Bad roommate! Bad roommate!"
[12:43] nefasturis: "Now sit!'"
[12:43] Maria: hahahhaha
[12:44] Maria: thats sooo meaaaann! haha
[12:44] nefasturis: if she doesnt obey, hit her in the face again, just to make sure you mean business.
[12:44] Maria: hahahha
[12:44] nefasturis: YOu have to show these people who's boss.
[12:44] nefasturis: and nothing more easily does that than doing the old stick-hits-face-at-120-kmph method.
[12:44] Maria: soooo evillll reddd! ahaha
[12:44] nefasturis: it's a time tested techinique dating back to the spanish era
[12:44] Maria: hahahaha
[12:45] nefasturis: back then there were no emo kids or MTV so we know for a fact that this method is Very effective
[12:45] Maria: so your saying korean roomates are like dogs haha
[12:45] Maria: hmm, they shoul bring it back then
[12:45] nefasturis: all roommates should be housetrained regardless of nationality
[12:45] Maria: hahaha
[12:45] nefasturis: its our duty as the new generation to make sure some traditions dont die out.
[12:45] Maria: hahaha

Cosplay Skit + Me Cackling Like A Madman

Public Static Advertisment (PSA)

Actually, DontAlmostGive.Org is a real site and yes, they give good ideas to help out in your community. I suggest you drop by the page if you have time. Well, not really. I mean, it's not like you'd really change your smug outlook of the poor/sick/stupid by just staring at banner ads so who are we kidding?

(and yes, I'll probably burn in hell for this post.)

The Last Day

Somebody once told me to live everyday as though it were my last. But really I wouldn't know what I would do if I knew today were my last day. No one would really know for sure how their last days will be spent here on earth. (Hell, I don't even know what I'm supposed to do tomorrow!)

I say we should live our days as though it were our first; We were all sure of how we spent that day. Of how we, in arriving in this world, embraced everything as new; of how we appreciated everything like we've never had any before; and and of how we took our time to stop and notice our surroundings. If we stop racing against time for a minute and took a look at where we are, we may yet realize how beautiful life can be as if we had all the time in the world.

Someday, I'll find myself living my very last day. I'd like to see that day as me waking up in the morning and saying to myself, "Today will be a good day, and life will go on." Everything will be ordinary. There will be no rush. Because it's not for me to say or guess when my life will stop. But it's always for me to say how I will go on living it.

Typing Of The Dead

I won't meander about the subject. The Typing Of The Dead is to TouchTyping Classes what Jet Fighter Piloting is to flight school. It kicks that much ass.

The Typing Of the Dead (ToTD) is basically a port of the popular game House of The Dead 2, an light gun shooter arcade game. The main difference of the two is that instead of having a gun to shoot zombies, you only have your trusty keyboard with you and your range of vocabulary. Each enemy that appears will have a special word/character/phrase written in his chest and you're supposed to type them as fast as you can to simulate shooting.

Sounds easy? Think again. Phrases can get as long as "There is no such thing as urban ghosts." and words get real exotic, ranging from "Bouillabaisse" to "Cot'd Ivoire". Hordes of these worded zombies come at you with the frequency and tenacity of homeless people asking for change.

I tried playing the game for two hours straight and felt the equivalent hand stress of a whole day of officework after playing. Watching my fingers purple, I thought to myself "I need to train more."

This game answers the question: "If backspace could kill, how dead will I be?" The answer is "Dead, very dead. The 5 continues and 3 lives gone kind of dead."

And unlike other videogames where the only benefit is being able to boast "I saw the ending", this game actually improves your typing efficiency, which you will be able to use at work, in school, and when there's a zombie standing in front of you with "PLEASE CHECK IN YOUR BAGGAGE AT THE COUNTER" flashing in his chest.

As a testament to the efficacy of this game in improving typing skills, this article was made with less than 10 backspace presses.

I'd recommend this to anybody, because people who still don't know how to touchtype are douchebags.

Update:
The benefits keep on coming. A couple of minutes ago I was asked to do a demonstration of a newly developed program through remote desktop control (i.e. they can only see the monitor and my mouse/keyboard movements). The only way I could communicate with people thousands of KMs away was through a notepad we could see in the monitory together. It's like chat, except you dont have to press enter for them to see your message. The training given to me by ToTD the past few days helped me reduce the annoying backspaces and made the appearance of the messages both fast and error-free. No jokes, this program is actually worth the time.

Humorology 101

If I had a penny for everytime you turn a good conversation into something stupid, I'd be living my life in constant change.

Taxonomy:
Witticism -> One-liner -> Critical

Semantic details:
This one-liner is actually a type of "penny for" implementation of the "you're so stupid" class of critical jokes. The "penny for" structure was popularized by the early humorists Boggart and the more contemporary Handey and Mitchel. In this structure, the second half of the sentence usually delivers the punchline using wit while the first line follows the same format as follows:

"If I had a penny for [something claimed to occur very frequently]"

For the second part, the author uses double-meaning, which is more frequently employed in the duality subclassification of one-liners. "Constant change" both refers to a steady flow of pennies as refered to by the first line and at the same time, link-references the word "turn" to give another meaning to the word "change".

The make-up of the second part increases the complexity of the joke making it a double-pass entry, which means the joke has to be reevaluated by the audience to get the full effect.

Utilization:
Due to the double-pass entry nature of the joke, usage should be limited to slow-pace delivery as a standalone for better evaluation and timing - and to achieve maximum efficacy.

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I'm not sure what they teach in stand-up comedy courses in the states (yes they do have them) but I'm betting it's something like this. Also, I fell asleep while writing this piece - twice.

PCSO is a boatload of bullshit.

I was watching local TV the other night when I saw this PCSO commercial for the n-th time. It dawned to me. What the fuck is PCSO doing on my TV? I asked my younger sister if she knew what PCSO is. She didn't so clearly PCSO wasn't informing anybody with the commercial. And yet this song airs regularly on both radio and TV. It's useless. I don't even know what they're trying to convey in the song.

Why the hell do they need to advertise themselves anyway? You don't see the Department of Agriculture plugging themselves on TV once every hour or so. For one, it's unnecessary. For another, nobody cares about their public image anyway.

I bet if government units were people PCSO would be the insecure attention whore bitch who always has to be in somebody's spotlight. When was the last time you said to yourself "I need to go to PCSO" anyway? (clue: never)

If ever they have to advertise something it'd be their main product: SWEEPSTAKES. You dont see that on the commercial. The assholes running the show are missing the whole point of advertising. They're wasting money. Money that's supposed to go to charity.

Just because they're one of the largest money-churning arms of the government doesn't give them the right to dot our screens with shitty songs by shitty bands with shitty vocalists.

Serve the people and stop spoon-feeding shit.

Reflections of A Frustrated Hero

Day 27, still at the office.

...At that moment, I realized how hard it was to be a superhero who has to put his costume on and off as the moment called for it. I bet Peter Parker and Clark Kent sometimes have their "oops I forgot" moments too. After thinking about it, having the whole office hear my boss yell "MISTER, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOUR PANTS?!" wasn't so bad anymore.

History's Misunderstood Characters

(warning: semi-technical article ahead. if you're not savvy with nationalism and Philippine history, come back tomorrow)

Our national history has always been a weird one. Unlike many other countries who have their own historians like Plutarch, Herodetus, Thomas Carlyle and many others, we don't have a lot of historical data generated by our own kind.

For our case, colonized by three diffrent people in a span of almost 400 years, it's always the colonizers doing the writing for us. So what happens is that invaders basically walk in, kill everybody, and tell whoever's left what "really" happened.

As a result, most of our history books is filled mostly speculative writing that sometimes feels like they are no more than biased subjective opinion on the matter. For today's article, I'd like to feature a certain personality I remember only from first year high's social studies.

His name is Januario Galut and this man is probably the most infamous of traitors in our short but interesting history. As with all other fine details of our amazing history, Januario's name was only mentioned in the testimony of the Texas Regiment who asked for his services during the Philippine-American War.

In case you don't know what Janurio Galut is famous for, he is said to be a Christianized Tingguian(Igorot) mercenary who, like Ephialtes of the battle of Thermopylae, led the US forces around a hidden third path of the choke point Tirad Pass where Phil. General Gregorio Del Pilar stalled the American forces to let the then President Emilio Aguinaldo escape.

For somebody resoundingly treacherous, very little is known about this man. At school I was taught to consider him as a brown-skinned Judas Iscariot, who sold his own allies to the enemy at the face of a handsome reward. In text book illustrations, he is often depicted as a small, retarded looking igorot with a scowl and a smug.

Of course, upon research, none of these elaborations can be proven with any concrete documentation. And even more striking is the fact that upon further research, the whole "traitor" stance taken by so many historians and teachers might even be proven wrong.

Lewis & Clark Journal October, 1905 ran an article about the Igorots. In this article (parap.), details about the stance of Igorots (Januario's minority) were given.

In February 1899, war broke out between American troops and Philippine independence fighters known as insurrectos. The Igorot sent a contingent of men to fight the Americans at Caloocan outside of Manila, but the Igorot warriors, armed only with spears, axes, and shields, quickly decided to return home when confronted with American rifles and artillery. The Igorot soon fell out with the insurrectos and became U.S. allies, acting as guides for American troops in the rugged highlands of northern Luzon.

Much like the Italians who, at the end of the first and second world wars, found themselves at the front of a helpless struggle, the Igorot army adopted a reversed role in the war and started helping the other side.

It is also know then that even then, among early Filipinos, there was already strong discrimination towards the Tingguian people by their lowland country men and that they were hardly considered as part of the same race and it was not until the formal establishment of the Commonwealth Republic that the indigenous Moros and Igorots were taken into the official pool of nationalities that formed the state population.

For this reason, reversing stances in a war like the Italians did was merely a tactical decision of an independent army and not exactly a last minute act of treachery by offical allies motivated by greed as romanticized by our history. It is highly possible that Januario Galut was, in fact, under orders to assist the Americans during the battle of Tirad Pass, which he did so. There was no mention of reward in any account given about the battle.

I'd like to end this little piece by saying it is possible that what is stated in this article is wrong and that history did not happen as I imagined it, but all logic and existing data is concerned, Januario Galut's nonbetrayal is more plausible than what is originally stated in our "historical" records.

Januario Galut, unfortunately, is only one of the many many misunderstood, misrepresented characters of our somewhat colorful national history.

This article was created to supplement the short story about the said Igorot pathfinder entitled "Traitor's Own" under the Alternate History speculative fiction genre.

Weapons of Mass Amplification

This is almost every typical mid-income house living room in the province that I've seen: a sala table, a sofa, possibly a small TV, pictures of family members on the wall and AN EXTREMELY LARGE COMPONENT RADIO occupying half the room that looks like it'd go transformers the moment you hit play.

Filipinos love music, I understand this. But what I don't get is why it seems like in every barrio, there's this arms race of speakers and shit. You'd go into a house and the largest thing you'll find is the component radio. These same people are the people who have barely anything to eat, yet have radios that eat up more electricity than Robocop having orgasm.

I remember one house we stayed in before, the radio was so large, whenever it was turned on it'd make a low humming sound and it'll dim every single lightbulb in the fucking village. 50 gazillion watts of speaker power baby!

5.1 digital speakers? Fuck that. These things can cause richter 5.1 earthquakes. I tried listening to "macarena" (they like to play these kinds of music) to such a stereo once, the song permanently burned itself on my ears. I was rocked so hard my body kept on involuntarily vibrating for about a month or so. And if ever I have children, I bet they'd come out of my wife doing the macarena because my sperm was exposed to such loud music.

God forbid you're in town when two households are component-dueling. That's when two neighbors startup their stereos and crank up the volume to try and outdo each other. This happened to me, and I actually thought I was in the scene of a disaster film. Roofs were blown away and many many children were lost (probably ran away because of the bad taste of the adults)

I really think there should be a regulating body regarding the size of these things. I'm sure at the trend we have right now, it wont be long before somebody comes up with Stereos large enough to blow people to bits- and give them bad hearing for life.

I don't think I can put up with bad tasting "Itaktak mo" spinoffs blaring in my ear at 180 decibels. And while there's no real study conducted yet, I bet hearing mic feedback from something that large as that would sterilize men faster than nude pictures of Vina Morales.

Think of the horror.

Dreaming Of Titanic

I had a dream last night. I was in the last moments of Titanic just as it was about to sink, talking to the captain of the ship. "Take all the women and children to the life boats," he said with a weary voice, "There's something I have to do."

I nodded and replied, "Whatever floats your boat."

I woke up after talking to him, but he probably didn't appreciate what I said. Some people can be cold like that. (specially when they're dead)

I think I'm going to watch Titanic again, just to make sure I didn't accidentally timetravel and change the plot of the highest grossing film of all time.

Did I tell you Tiger Woods was there too? Funny because I don't even remember Tiger Woods' face in particular. But he was there anyway. Maybe because I felt that all movies should have at least one black person in every film - the way Hollywood intended it.

I wonder if he felt bad about time travelling too? I bet that would mess up his golf because back then, black people weren't allowed to play golf (or own anything - not even a golf club) until very recently. Also, because he had 4 legs in my dream.

This is probably one of the most random posts I've made in a very long time. But that's okay I guess. When you've just come back from 1913, anything is excusable.

Spiderman 3 - World's Most Expensive Spider

So I've heard Spiderman is the second most expensive film ever made in history with a price tag of more than half a billion dollars. The first one is Cleopatra, which was made long before we were born, back when movie directors shat bricks of gold by eating a strict diet of shitty actors.

By comparison, a big budgeted local film is a million dollars. Spiderman's budget is like having every actor on the set of Gagamboy win the local lottery - twice. Titanic, one of the highest grossing films of all time, earned a billion dollars. Even if Spiderman earns half of what Titanic earned, they're just about breaking even.

Where did the money go you ask? I'm betting it's in trying to make Toby Mcguire look Peter Parker's age. I know it wasn't just me who noticed how Peter gets an extra chin for every SpiderMan film and how the strands of his web seems to be coming from his hairline. If the rumor that there will be six Spiderman movies is true, by the time the fourth one gets in, I'm guessing they'd have to make Peter Parker 100% computer-generated and cast Toby as his Uncle Ben instead.

Also, these pictures of "Mary Jane" should be enough to tell you where the bags of money went:

Heavy renovation.

The rest of whats left of the money probably went on to cramming as much plot in the movie as possible, leaving the story with so many open questions, you'd think it was a choose-your-own-adventure book turned into a film.

That said, Spiderman 3 was a good film. Seeing a Harry with a dead father and a scar on his forehead is new - something we've never seen in a film for the past six months. The sexual tension betwen Peter and Harry was well placed also. Really. There were several parts of the film that looked so gay, the gay people sitting behind us were saying "Told ya." There's sarcasm in this paragraph somewhere.

My friend Addy who at the time hasn't seen the film said to me, just before I was about to watch the movie, "Spiderman 3 is so emo, even the costume is Emo." After watching the movie I can't help but think that's the whole point of this amazingly long film:

"Wearing black turns you emo."

No? Listen to this:

Oh my god my apartment door won't open! It's like my heart that's not ready for joy, but is filled with only loneliness and revenge. Therefore I shall wear black, listen to jazz, and wear moptop. Also, I will dance pussified ragtime, for the heck of it.

Spiderman 3 is so emo, it cut its own scenes (like ones that make sense).

For what it's worth though, seeing Hobgoblin actually being able to kick ass using his flying sled and not half-falling like his father did in part one is a good change. Seeing people clothslined is the highlight of any movie for me (and midgets - all high-budget films should be able to afford midgets).

Even though you don't want to see this movie, unless you want to be left out and be labeled "that guy who never really goes out", you should watch it anyway.

Because Mary Jane says so.

Pen Saber

This is project two of my After Effects series - the pen lightsaber. I used After Effects 7.0 and Andrew Kramer's Lightsaber preset for this short clip. The actual movie clip was shot using my Nokia 6680. Also, you did not see me wearing my highschool P.E. shirt. It's part of the special effects.




I've yet to get Adobe Premiere and Adobe Audition so for the mean time, there will be no sounds on this film.

For what it's worth, after a few hours of going through tutorials, After Effects ain't such a hard horse to tame anymore. Still, I find some of its controls hard to understand. But I guess that applies for everything - including women.

Specially women.

Blabbering Is Good

One good reason why blabbering at work is cool: You don't get suspected as a serial killer. I know, it sounds farfetched but hear me out for a sec. Right after some shooting or some massacre and they start interviewing people who knew the guy who did the job, what do these people say*?

"He never really talked that much."

"We avoided him because he was the weird silent type."

"The guy always had the negative vibes with him, ya? Maybe it's because he never really liked to socialize. Also maybe because he has stockpiles of weapons under the drawer of his office desk. But I think it's mostly because he's all quiet and shit."

"You're not supposed to be interviewing people right after they just got shot."

Three of the four statements above are pointing toward an apathetic antisocial. The fourth statement would've said the same had he not been spewing out parts of his spleen while he was being carted away by the medics.

Here's what you never really hear from them:

"Yeah, it was good the cops shot that noisy motherfucker from across the office. I always thought his loud fucking mouth would kill him one way or another."

That's right. Noisy people are just noisy. Sure, silent waters run deep. But it's also the deep water that kills people just because they're passing by. So when you hear an officemate talking loudly about her latest escapade in a bar the previous night, think of it this way: "That's one officemate who won't be shooting nobody today."

*Taken from actual reenactment interviews conducted carefully by a group of accident experts from the credible establishment of my imagination

Odyssey Live

A bit of a short plug requested by a friend. I'm not getting paid for this so I'm still technically not selling out (don't worry, that's to come later on in the show)

So anyway, Odyssey Live is what you get when you put Friendster and Napster in a deluxe Vitoria hotel room and put rose petals on th bed. The site's pretty cool in a way because people hanging around the forums are a bit more cultured than, say, the random people who keep on trying to add you up on friendster. For the geeks, think of it this way: With all the music around you, you'd be deaf to not have anything to talk about when you try to work it up that cute looking girl in the jpg picture you saw in the front page.

Anyway, hit it up if you have nothing better to do online (surfing for midget pornography does not count as "better")

Music Downloads

Why Mark Lapid Cried Saging

Okay, so every now and then comes a day in a life of a man, when he steps up to face the challenge and creates something that's beyond him. The result is often something astounding even for that man. Something that would make that man's mark in history.

Other days, he installs After Effects for two hours and makes edited versions of Mark Lapid's famous saging movie clip for another fifteen minutes. Today's one of those days for me.



I really should start taking this aftereffects thing more seriously.

Seriously.