Saturday, December 31, 2005

The Irony of Blogging

Some people blog because they have something to share and they want people to share it to, while some people blog because even though they have nothing to share, they want people to share the fact that they have nothing to share to.

In short, bloggers want company. Bloggers want readers.

Isn't it ironic, then, when bloggers start writing about their impressions that nobody reads their blogs, if only to elicit a response from readers who may or may not really exist?

posted by Ocnarf @ 12:11 AM   0 have spoken

Friday, December 23, 2005

You Learn Something From Everything, Even From Somebody Else's Foul-mouthed... um... Bitching...

I like UPLB. The people, the place, the idea of it all exudes an aura different from when I was studying at the Ateneo (a place I sadly do not feel "at home" with anymore").

Curious, I asked my mom once, "What makes Iskolars ng Bayan so... so... likeable?"

"They're down-to-earth, and they're humble," she answered. She described, in so few words, how I felt towards UP and it's inhabitants.

Humility...

I stumbled upon this article about the time I started writing for this blog, written by some guy called Maddox, a person notorious for his foul-mouthed ranting about anything and everything under the sun in his website which he calls "The Best Page in the Universe." A very enlightening read for us so-called "bloggers," if you can stand all his sarcasm.

Sometimes, a slap in the face (literal or figurative) is all somebody needs for him/her to learn...

"If the grass is greener on the other side, then the guy with the greener grass doesn't think your grass is greener now does he, asshole? The message that this proverb is trying to stumble through is that everything always looks more attractive when you don't have it. I'm sure there are millionaires crying themselves to sleep every night because they don't live in a trailer park. Just face it: sometimes nobody envies you. There has to be a bottom and that bottom is probably you."

-George Ouzounian (a. k. a. Maddox), "Phrases That Make My Blood Boil"

Crude, yes, but you'd have to admit, the guy gets his point across pretty quickly, don't you think?

Oh yeah, if there's one more thing I've learned from the guy, it's this: excessive ranting is never a good thing. Try it for yourself: lock yourself up in a room, make a list of everything you hate, then read that list over and over. Pretty soon you'll emerge an angrier, if not a more depressed, person. Believe me, I've tried it, and it doesn't feel good.

No, sarcastic ranting is not cool. Nothing that makes you end up a worse person afterwards is.

posted by Ocnarf @ 12:08 AM   2 have spoken

Saturday, December 17, 2005

A Communicator's Credo (just a little piece I thought up...)

I believe that people—intentionally or unintentionally—build psychological walls around themselves, walls that block their minds from others and others’ minds from theirs, sort of a self-preservative psychological repression, in order to protect themselves from others, and possibly others form themselves.

I believe that every time we communicate with each other, we chip away at these walls, until day comes when all barriers crumble into dust, smashed to bits by humanity’s innate need for society.

I believe that achieving this will be a great challenge, for we live in a society where it is so much easier to say “Fuck you” than to say “I love you.”

I believe, though, that while it is a great challenge, it is not an impossible one, for our world is erratic, and everything we do and don’t do, no matter how seemingly insignificant, changes it, little by little, until it reaches the point where the world has become a new place, though we fail to see the change in all its subtlety.

posted by Ocnarf @ 1:52 AM   3 have spoken

Monday, December 12, 2005

Tonight was December 12, 2005. And it sucked.

It's official: tonight was one of the worst nights of my life.

I should have gotten the hint when I saw two fellow writers crying in the office, trying futilely to complete their assignments. They wouldn't say what they were crying about, so I respected their privacy and shut myself up. But, depression and sadness are contagious, in the same way happiness is.

I walked from the UPLB Perspective office to our Editor-in-Chief's house to get an article draft. Long story, but basically I was sweaty from running back and forth CPark looking for the people I was with, because I was stupid enough not to ask them where we were supposed to meet after I took a detour to the dorm to pick a USB disk up.

When we finally arrived at the EIC's house, I hurriedly searched through the piles of paper only to find out in the end that the draft wasn't there. I went all the way to the house just to print two pages of unedited article (damn, I could've done it back in the office, mas malapit pa.)

I wanted to get all this behind me as soon as possible, so I walked back to the office, when the rain decided it wanted to smother me with all its existence, starting with a drizzle that turned into real rain when I was nearing the SU Building. Good thing I at least had an umbrella with me...

... an umbrella whose handle was so brittle that it snapped off the first time I flicked the water off it. A BRAND-FUCKING-NEW UMBRELLA! Damn Divisoria ripoff.

The moment I entered the SU Lobby, an editor came up to me and asked me to continue the article draft they said they scrapped just a few minutes before. And I thought I had less business to attend to. Talk about disillusionment.

I went up to the office, looking for someone to join and maybe talk to over dinner. Turned out all the others had already eaten, and here I was, dizzy with hunger, looking for a companion because I just didn't feel like eating alone.

Finally, my two fellow Culture writers agreed to join me, and since there were few restaurants left open (it was almost 10PM) I decided to grab something at McDo, since anything farther would have left me fainting of hunger (I ate lunch at 11:30AM that day).

The worst part: over dinner, all we could talk about were the staff's desires to leave Perspective, that there was so much more we could accomplish (as students, and more importantly, as UPLB freshmen, something we weren't going to be in a year or two) if we left, that though we acknowledge the fact that our editors are less-than-perfect people, their editing manner, in this depressed writer's opinion, is what hinders us most from being much better writers, that what they are often doing is not editing, but imposing their own thoughts on somebody's written work, which mutates it into a confusing jumble of facts and ideas that the in the end the writer may even stop believing in what he/she wrote.

And since people are not allowed to use the computer in the EIC's house (they're doing the layout for an issue I even doubt will be released), here I am, a wasted and sleep-deprived zombie (yet again), typing nothing but bits and pieces of frustrated ranting.

(Forgive me for writing all this, I just had to get it all out of my system.)

posted by Ocnarf @ 10:28 PM   0 have spoken

Saturday, December 10, 2005

"Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros" is a great movie...

... no, I'm not gay.

I can't really put my finger on the reason why, but it just is.

I don't know with others, but I kinda figured Maxi (Nathan Lopez, who, if I'm not mistaken, also had a role in "Mga Anghel na Walang Langit," that ABS-CBN drama filled with emoting kids) wasn't gay in real life. His acting in the movie was, umm, overacted, something real gays don't do (the way I see it, at least).

Amusing, though, was the obvious increase in the gay population hanging out in Gateway Mall during the Saturday I watched the movie. The cinema was literally filled with "liberated" people, who laughed and cheered Maxi on with his/her dreams, aspirations and his/her crush on Kuya Victor the security guard.

Wonderful people, homosexuals. Their unique views on life and love will almost always make you want to retrospect, plus they're always good people to talk to.

That's the problem with society: oftentimes, it can't keep up with the erratic mindsets of people, and as a result people are ostracized and not listened to.

That's why movies like this are badly needed, to show large groups of people that times are changing and that they have to keep up if they don't want to be left alone with their stereotypes.

Believe me, you'll exit the moviehouse with a better view of gays after watching this little indie masterpiece.

As an afterthought, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was a great disappointment, plus Katie Leung looks like Sarah Geronimo.

posted by Ocnarf @ 4:01 PM   1 have spoken