Wednesday, October 24, 2007

For the record, yes I am still bored (rants, but this time FORTIFIED WITH LINKS! AND PICTURES!)

(taken from www.xkcd.com)


My sentiments exactly. I guess this is a big part of why being a UPLB student sucks: It's so easy to get used to a life where everybody who plays a significant part of your college life literally lives within radius of five minutes' walking, so that when it's time to finally leave the magic mountain of knowledge and once again float down into the separate and separated narratives we each call our real lives, we're basically lost. No matter how interesting your life is, you're back at square one every time you board that bus, jeepney, or whatever back to where you're really supposed to live, before you decided that you'd want to spend a few semesters in semi-retreat from parents and from driving. No matter how much you want to fuck those people and have an adventure, you can't.

Sorry. This from a guy who's bitter at the fact that his high school best friends are, respectively, driving wasted around QC, finishing a diploma course and doing exchange student stuff in Singapore.

While I'm on the subject of adventure...

Apparently people still equate eating balut with staring Death right in the face, at least in Cracked.com's 6 Most Terrifying Foods in the World. That's what happens when people look a little too long at their food before eating it.

Beats drinking semi-luminescent blue (meaning there's no way that stuff could have been made after a fruit flavor) Kool-Aid though, in my honest opinion.

posted by Ocnarf @ 6:14 PM   0 have spoken

Monday, October 22, 2007

For the record, yes, I am bored (rants)

So bored, in fact, that I tried to watch the crap that is the Spider-Man 3 DVD for the second time. And I couldn't stomach it, I only reached the part where Peter and Mary Jane were at the French restaurant. No cool action scene is worth going through lines like "This isn't about you, it's about me!" and "That was our kiss!". Ego, or should I say emo?

*"whatever"s self*

Speaking of emo, Ben Gibbard is a poet. Who else would've thought that "context" almost rhymes with "complex"?

*"whatever"s self*

I haven't written anything competent or creative since sembreak started. And the fact reminds me of the great child-lover (no, not pedophile) Roald Dahl's words, that "A person is a fool to become a writer". But it sucks not accomplishing anything for the previous week, and being fully aware of it. I hate myself. *emo*

*"whatever"s self*

All I really want to do now is satisfy my currently repressed wanderlust, to walk around somewhere in the city where I can get lost for hours at a time without immediate danger of getting held up and losing all means of getting home. Preferably with somebody as bored as I am. Anybody who reasons out that Antipolo is a city will have to talk to my hand. Nah, just kidding.

*"whatever"s self*

My life's not even a routine anymore. Time has turned fluid in this house, at least for my post-sem unwinding self. I don't get up at any fixed time, I don't eat at any fixed time, I don't sleep at any fixed time, I don't even calculate the number of hours sleep I get, unlike in eLBi. Every day is just a bunch of activities that take up random spots in the morning, afternoon and night's duration.

*"whatever"s self*

It's always been like this, semester in and semester out. Maybe it's a way for your body to adapt to sudden changes. Kinda like a hangover, where your body's trying to adapt to the sudden surge of alcohol in your blood. This time, your body's trying to adapt to the sudden absence of having to do anything, causing all the crappy mood swings and whatnot.

*"whatever"s self*

The 2007 Camaro Bumblebee looks to be one of the best Transformers Movie toys so far. To shell out 2k or not to shell out 2k for another Autobot?

*"whatever"s self*

Company of Heroes has too few 2v2 maps. The downloadables on the net look like crap though. Oh well, might as well overrun St. Hilaire with Axis Stormtroopers for the umpteenth time.

*"whatever"s self*

I miss Avenida, but I don't need a new wardrobe. I miss going to bookstores, but I still have a lot to finish. Heck, the Lovecraft compilation is still sitting there, all wrapped up in shiny plastic, waiting for me to finish reading the last few pages of Marquez's "Strange Pilgrims". So much for planning to read up on potential thesis material. I wish I has an extra pair of eyes and a brain twice as large. The headaches might suck more, though.

*"whatever"s self*

UP Pantas needs a place where we can workshop stories until 12mn at least once a week every week. Literary headaches and rushed readings, here we come.

*"whatever"s self*

I need money. Therefore, I need a jo... Nah.

Whatever. *"whatever"s self*

posted by Ocnarf @ 5:02 PM   0 have spoken

Sunday, October 07, 2007

On sleeping on it

What probing deep
Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?

-Thomas Bailey Aldrich

One of the final requirements in Learning Psychology class is a learning project, which basically means you have to teach yourself a skill and give a demonstration of it right before the semester ends. For creativity, and because drinking is the only vice I took to, I decided to include "How to Open a Bottle Without a Bottle Opener" in my proposal. Needless to say, it was the approved right away.

So I set two weekends aside for trying to teach myself the skill. Since I don't have time to sit down and ask for lessons from the dorm landlord, I try learning from a few YouTube videos and a bunch of posts about leverage and physics whatnot beneath them. Two weeks pass, and I still smell like Coke every time I practice on the sink, since every attempt ends up a sticky, sugary mess. Not what I put in the project proposal.

The weekend before my demonstration, the Comm Arts-Humanities Department assembly, the COMA 105 photography workshop and the alcohol taken the previous night mean that I fall asleep in my room the moment I get home. Eighteen dreamless hours of hibernation (with only about ten minutes for lunch) later, I wake up with a compelling desire to attempt my project again. I get up from bed and go straight to the bunch of bottles I bought to practice upon, and succeed on my first attempt, my spirit ascending along with the bottle cap as it jumped and almost hit the ceiling in our joint ecstasy.

...

One "Magic: the Gathering" novel tells the story of Jhoira the artificer, who went on what te Ghitu, her tribe, called a "spirit walk," a coma that struck after she became depressed with a dilemma that, if not acted upon, would kill a friend of hers that was stuck in a time rift. Upon waking from the coma, she immediately started drawing plans for the machine that, upon completion, solved the problem and saved her friend.

...

After my successful presentation just before this weekend, I told Ma'am Eloisa the story of what had happened to me, and asked her if there was a term for the experience. Apparently, as far as the psychology academe is concerned, there is no acknowledged term for learning how to do something, with neither past experience nor prior knowledge of doing it, by sleeping on it for a long period of time. Or if there is a term, it is probably one that is used rarely, as even Ma'am Eloisa's fellow psychology teachers did not have an answer.

posted by Ocnarf @ 11:29 AM   0 have spoken

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Classmate?


Tentative schedule for next semester. Any classmates out there?

ZOMG NO LUNCHBREAK ON TTH ROFLWTF.

posted by Ocnarf @ 5:26 PM   0 have spoken