Arctic Beetle

Quick Thought 1: When happiness is y dependent on an x, can it not ever exist as a middleway, which, at most, can only satisfy the parties involved, but rather as an absolute, genuine fulfillment that is not liable to instigate any regret or ill feeling later on? Having mentioned that this happiness in question follows a y = f(x) relation, I suppose this query is pointless because the only way to go about achieving this is to have either one of the forces contributing to the tension let go of his end of the string. But then, my sole premise was the constant tugging between the two concerned players, so if they both willfully lose their grip, wouldn’t that be the same as a compromise?

Quick Thought 2: I find that a person with raw wisdom cannot fully transcend to the level of a philosopher unless one of his feet is propped on the pit of the fallacy of composition. The intent of these thinkers has always been to pen all-encompassing generalizations on entities whose idea of permanence is but theoretical and ideal. If canines differ largely from their personalities, yet are still dogs, how is it that they’re trying to cramp us in a single statement? I am put off by the conception that as long some satisfy the anatomical qualifications of a man, they automatically merit to be collectively called as a humanity together with the rest. Part of being a human is our implicit rationality, and if by its usage, some mean the dastardly act of hoarding money through illegal means or settling to bloodshed and other corrupted machinations, then let us allow them to win over the title of humanity while the lot of us relinquish it for a label with a much agreeable nature.

Quick Thought 3: To further drive home my point in number 2, I am disposed to say that they are doing us a great disservice because we all know for a fact that leaders don’t forever remain righteous, not all the governed necessitate guidance from their leaders because sometimes it’s the other way around, and this or that form of government is not always apt for societies with varying histories. Philosophers should have recognized that the same mental aptitude that breathed life to their treatises is what precisely makes all of us not simplistic.

I seldom remember my promises, much less keep them. Breaching what I told two entries ago is too brusque but for something of this gravity, I cannot let it fall out unacknowledged either. My sister is trouble-philic and what she got herself into this time, if not the most huge, yields more suspense than getting seven to eight girls gang up on her in a very shoujo-like manner. How does someone who hasn’t taken a step beyond our doorway since February manage to pull in trouble? By getting death threats. Surprised? So I was but I bet your oral cavity made the larger O.

At the back of my mind, I predicted that it was a type of threat I can brush off as pointless notwithstanding the case’s high probability of occurrence. The string of messages we found in her inbox came out to be  implicit offers stating that a wad of money amounting to 20, 000 PHP can (but not almost instantly) be an immunity necklace against possible deadly offenses by “Tau Gamma”. Or at least that’s what I understood from the texter’s intellectually-overwhelming Deaf grammar. Tau Gamma’s background is a haze I wish to direct none of my researching or inferring abilities on since it’s evidently a prop added to make the threat fall into the flair category.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Me, I KILL YOU.

As with any action film, there has to be a “great escape” of crucial relevance to the rest of the story: her’s entailed leaving the bounds of our home in stealth mode sometime last week. That would have been the plan most susceptible to attack so in supplement to her mind void of shrewdness, we (the sidekicks) stopped her.

We had suspects, of course. Logically, she shouldn’t have a lot of enemies since her irrationality is ultimately selective towards people within her immediate sanguine relations. In her lifespan, there has only been one person who indicated the likelihood of resorting to such means to harm and that’s Krista, the same girl who arranged the aforementioned mobbing. As it later turned out, our conjecture is positive while the rest of the threat is but a flimsily-weaved story that can be made tattered by the mention of  the words police, catch and jail.

For a moment, I was frankly scared. Experiences like this one cause me to rethink whether the line “I live a normal life.” applies to me.

It’s been days since I recognized why being sent to the world beyond purgatory is a disaster. The heat coupled with the dark environment and lack of electric fans sounds more hell-like than suffering something equivalent to my sins. It’ll be like prancing around Manila in midday with only your everyday get-up or, incurring death unknowingly via heat stroke.

The daily thermometer readings inside my room average to 35.8 degree Celsius; that is approximately 1.2 units away from the normal human body temperature. Being off from the reach of nearest source of air, may it be hot or cold, for 2 seconds can make my sweat glands active as the most hyperactive child you know. Even when I take a bath, it seems to me that the rate at which my body produces sweat is in equilibrium with the speed the water from the shower hose gushes. I am more and more inclined to think that I am probably losing an appreciable amount of fat due to the weather. On the downside, the situation of my face hangs variably between being chapped and excessively sebaceous. Gross, yes.

A 5-second exposure to the sun can cause my complexion to turn two or three shades down the gradient. The sun’s visible affection for my skin is more fiery than a kiss and is suitably named as sun-burnt. Calling out to all the artists out there, my wide array of skin tones is open for palette-referencing.

There should be a primary cause to this and right now, I am trying to think of reasons less lame than global warming. Then again, Philippines is a tropical country.

I need an everyday supply of buko juice.

Being useless is a choice and while it is a common human logic to have an inflated feeling of self-importance, my sister has long voluntarily taken the path of a bum. It may be fated for the hearing-impaired, at least here, to join the pack of the unemployed after college but they definitely have the option to try. Somehow, I think it is the only way to make the authorities aware of the need to legislate bills that will give them priority over the able. I’m not giving that assurance anytime soon, especially with the retrieval of election funds that’s gonna materialize right after the Presidential Elections. I don’t mind starting on this topic but that’s not the point I’m swerving at. Long introduction short: the pebbles in our lawn are evidently much useful than my sister.

As I put my pouts into words now, she is probably in her bed dozing like Snorlax whose potbelly is more plump than ever. In her dreams, I assume, is her fairly new 50-year old boyfriend affectionately snuggling her– yes, another old bloke from US. Roughly five hours from now, she will rise to tame her stomach that now emits sounds which resemble a frog croaking in screamo. The highlight of her day comes when she turns on the computer to launch Camfrog and have a lovely conversation with William (the boyfriend) from 7 am til 4 pm. Dinner, sleep, breakfast, PC and the routine is fixed on loop again. Everyone’s idealistic notion of exciting, is it not?

Before you pull a grimace at my irate mockeries, if it’s any comfort to your moral sense, our family has tried proposing businesses she can handle alone despite her disability. She was actually pretty cool with everything until we mentioned that the PC she’ll be using at work is exclusively for the purpose of getting her tasks done (read as no 10 hrs/day video call with William). To her, the idea of supporting herself with her self-earned money is petty to the thought of not seeing the man she talks to every single day of her potentially-opportune life. I no longer try to figure out whether she thinks of her future because she obviously does. Her future as a deaf married to a man based in US has been in her mind and all along, her life has been purely dedicated to achieve that end. What a waste of a solid educational background.

Before she turns 23 this June, I wish her daily iterations would encounter a “break;” somewhere. May she finally outgrow her glam American Dream as well.

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PS: Now that I shuffle through my entries, they are mostly about her. I promise to stop this series soon.

The past fourteen days ended quite too rapidly and I don’t know if I’m accounting them in such manner because I have mostly caught my Zs way ahead of my usual 1-2 am sleeping time or it’s just that when faced with an ill situation that leaves me agape and surprised as Dora and Boots when Swiper is, for crying out loud, finally in the range of their sight, everything seems to have been hit by VLC’s speed up option. To say that those two weeks was a roller coaster ride is yards away from the appropriate description I want achieve and not to mention, being inept in using metaphors and unfair to roller coasters that fancy me. Had I written a version of this post on every day of last week, this would have several variation in its concluding paragraph and the primary emotion it would want to suffuse. My fingers are crossed that what happened today is a definite ending to my potential Maalaala Mo Kaya entry.  What took place will be condensed as much as possible and narrated hereinafter.

So it is no longer a hypothesis and is a proven theorem that my sisters are luckless in the love department. Maybe not entirely but if they happen to be lucky, there is something in that luck that is also being unlucky. If you cannot pin the idea down, then how is “a guy whom you love so much, complete with the falling royal red hearts, revealing to you that he’s been divorced twice and has four spawns” to explain that? Guess what, I’m revealing you’s antecedent in the wrong sequence: my sister who’s desperate to get married. Flame me not ’cause how else would you describe someone who officially affirms that she and her suitor are together after two weeks of chasing and who forcefully wants the wedding on May, even getting to the point that she had us believe that it was the guy’s idea originally?

To sum up the incident from two weeks ago, with her narrow mindset that’s good enough to be considered close working at its best, she eloped.. not with Dagoberto but with her notion that until the time he steps on the Philippine shore, he would support her with his 150 dollars whose frequency at which they would come God knows what. Either she is too fed up with her self-deprecating thoughts or too brilliant to tell her friends that we beat her just to sway their sympathy and win the comfort of their homes. As narrated by my mother herself, she went forth with a smile and a hint of scorn on her face.

She wasn’t home for quite some time and so was my mother’s usual self after being upbraided by my sister for not gifting her a laptop, for entering her room when she doesn’t want her to, for scolding her back when she was still tameable and simply for being her mother — okay, I just made the last one up but all of them allude to that, don’t they? No wonder her eyes were turgid from all the crying. And to be honest, as much as I wanted to show my sister that my life does not overlap with hers, I did shed some tears too after witnessing our mother’s self-worth decrease like the coordinates of a half-life graph.

Last week, for the most part it, was persuading her to come back home, to my displeasure. Hours ago, she finally went back with traces of hunger on her shrinking belly and her bullheadedness still present. But that’s okay because there is nothing more comforting than seeing my mother’s relief upon getting the household semi-tidy before my father’s arrival on the 28th and heart-warming than the thought of gathering everyone’s physical presence (except my eldest sister’s) on the first day of 2010. Also, I am happy that I no longer have to pat my stomach and have it suffer small servings of food intended to be my breakfast, lunch and dinner because apparently, there is no more reason for my mother to trim down the production of quality food in quality amount.

Sure enough, I am not the first one to spew out moans of disapproval and spits of disgust at Ampatuan Jr. who by the power of Satan came out unscathed against the bullets aimed at him while he was being sent to the local airport. Now if there were also weapons of sexual assault and gallons of semen that were flung at him in midair, that would have been quite close the the vengeance he rightfully deserves. Further disfiguring of his disfigured body that reflects its inside wouldn’t hurt too. Total organism annihilation and his detritus being sent to the outer space  sounds fair enough for a clan and a bunch of journalists murdered, only if the universe wasn’t an ethereal cosmos. Only one conclusion could be made and that is he doesn’t deserve to be in any place other than hell’s newest circle especially fabricated for him.

If the human race is the paragon and criterion of how intelligent every organism on the planet is, then I am very ashamed to be part of it and be put under the same classification that demon is in. Who ever thought that the use of intelligence could lead to a macabre conclusion that in order to obstruct a rival candidate from running, a private army should be commanded to mangle, rape and kill (in any order) the members of a group whose only intent is to file a certificate of candidacy? I am now appealing to his emotions because I am sure that from all the possible forms of wisdom that could exist, none would ever think of doing — no, even planning that massacre. Looking at the evidences of how he planned this carnage, in fact, the existence of his emotions and moral scruples is also in question.

I am filled with distaste. Mamatay ka na! I wouldn’t have two minds killing you in the most brutal and humiliating way I can think of.

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PS: This has undergone retention for quite some time now, because of some school requirements that called for last-minute attention (in short, cramming).