Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t I?

After three days of being a passenger in a car in the south-western Irish countryside, if I don’t have to see another farm in the next six months I would be perfectly happy.

Also if I could not see another piece of bacon or rasher or sausage or blood pudding for the next three months, that would be great, too.

Adare

Children under control

Cliffs near Inch Beach

White Strand

Top of Valentia Island

Mucross Farms

Yellow Trail in the National Park

From Slate:

Most Internet memes have the lifespan of fruit flies. But there’s evidence to suggest fail is here to stay. For one thing, it’s easier to say than failure.[...] And there’s a proud tradition in English of chopping off the endings of words for convenience. Between Old and Middle English, many nouns stopped being declined, [...] [W]hile Romance languages still conjugate their verbs, English keeps it relatively simple: I speak, you speak, we speak, etc. It’s also common for verbs to become nouns, Liberman points out. You can lock a door, but it also has a lock. You can bike, but you can also own a bike. There was great fuss a century ago among readers of the British magazine Notes and Queries when it used the word meet to refer to a sporting event. It’s not surprising that failure would eventually spawn fail.

• Watched Ran last night. I have an irrational fear of Chinese opera and Noh theater so when I first saw Lady Kaede in the film I was suddenly all, oh shit I’m fucked, my dreams are going to be all mental.
• Season 3 of Friday Night Lights is on, too, and I realized today why I love it with all my heart and why Matt Saracen trying to avoid his mother’s eyes brings tears to mine. It’s because it melts my cold, hard soul; the cynic in me evaporates. Hah.
• Am also (watching much too much tv) watching Fringe, which is kind of JJ Abrams’ take on the X-Files. It’s ok so far, but that Australian chick and Pacey are no Mulder and Scully.

Siguro kasi pinanood ko ulit yung Rules of Attraction kanina. “All of our moves make up for the silence”. Atsaka ito yung favorite noisy angry morning song ko habang naglalakad papuntang opis.

Dude the truth is I don’t give a fuck about you now; not really. I value my friendships with your friends more than I do yours. I don’t really care about your life or how perfect it’s turning out to be. I don’t mean to sound  bitter or cruel; I suppose I do sound that way. But that’s the farthest thing from my mind right now; I know what bitterness about you tastes like after that long con in which you dumped me by getting me to dump you (by the way, I had a guy very astutely explain to me last week the mechanics of performing such a con; seriously I could feel the fog lift from my eyes). This isn’t bitterness. This is embarrassment.

I don’t really feel compelled to have anything to do with you, to meet your wife (who has never heard of me - I guess you’re embarrassed, too), to hang out there. I don’t feel any affinity for you; the truth is we only became friends because we wanted to fuck each other. Or, you wanted to fuck me, and he and I needed to get rid of each other.

I hold no affection for you, no warm and fuzzy memories. We are not friends; whatever we went through, we did not go through together. In fact I hold him in better regard than you even though he was hostile and terrible to me in the end. Because I guess I still hold out some hope that he had become that person not of his own volition. Whereas you, you were always kind of a prick to me.

So ang napansin ko dito sa bahay kung nasan yung apartment ko ay parang linggo linggo may laging iba ibang kotse na naka park sa front yard. Minsan pag madaling araw may naririnig akong lumalabas ng bahay, tipong bang ng door muna bago yung gate. So, ewan ko, ang suspetsa ko yung mga neighbors ko laging nagbabago ng boyfriend. Hindi ko actually alam kung sino yung neighbors ko, particularly dahil hindi sila masyadong friendly, pero ok lang.

Kaninang hapon may napansin akong bagong kotse tapos yung driver lumabas, may dala dalang maliit na video camera tapos nagvivideo nung front yard. Some oldish guy, kalbo, bigote. Slight seedy looking. After a while may sumama sa kanya na dalawa pang mama, parehong oldish, muscular, big gold necklaces. Alam mo yung South Park episode na parody ng 300, si Mr(s). Garrison gustong isave yung lesbian bar kung saan sila tumatambay, tapos ni-recruit nya yung mga Mexicans na mag pose as Persians para ma-infiltrate yung club ng bumili nung lesbian bar… does it make sense? Basta ganon. Anyway tapos ganon yung itsura nung mga mama kanina: pomade in their hair, tight shirts, bling.

Tapos inisip ko, either yung mga kapitbahay kong Polish eh part ng mafia, o may gumagawa ng pr0n movie sa apartment sa baba.

Which reminds me of this one time nung unang linggo ko dito tapos hindi ko mapagana yung washing machine. Kinwento ko na ba to? Kumatok ako sa kapitbahay para magpatulong sana, pagbukas nung guy naka bathrobe lang at medyas. Tapos slight nagparinig ako na kelangan ko ng tulong. Ayaw pumalag. Ok fine. Pagsara nya ng pinto, narinig ko yung bass ng house music nag-on. Afternoon delight na yun.

Anyway. Shwanna share. Itatry ko kumuha ng pictures next time pag nakita ko ulit sila. Can you say, Disturbia?

From Gawker:

The funny thing about a rebellious, anti-establishment man movie like this is that it’s actually the exact same thing as Gossip Girl—silly, aspirational garbage about grownups in kid suits—only funked up and dragged downtown to appeal to arty teenagers that will be saddened by the film (because they’ll never have that, never ever! I promise!) and to people in their 20’s and 30’s who will falsely remember high school as being just like that

Was almost held up in Heathrow on the way back from Seattle when an overzealous passport control official handed me a note saying I was going to have to go through a “Medial Inspection” before being allowed to take my connecting flight back home. Strange that I was anticipating all sorts of fuck ups in the States with immigration but nothing of the sort ever happened (the border control guard in my way in was clearly first-generation Filipino immigrant), and I get to London for a layover and I get pulled over for having been rejected for a UK visa in 2004 (we didn’t have enough papers; we got the visa a week later).

Anyway after they made me wait for ten minutes or so looking like a wet chicklet, with a note in my hand that said, to the best of my understanding, that I was going to be asked to bend over, the lady who took my passport came out, handed me my passport back, got the note from me and promptly tore it up. She mumbled a half-assed apology that she took up my time. I said, No problem ma’am, and then ran to security for a flight that was supposed to fly 20 minutes later (it was delayed by two hours, giving me enough time to go to the bathroom and take a dump blocked by 9 hours of air travel).

First thing I did when I got back was do my laundry and go to the grocery store for necessities. Then three friends and I went pub-crawling and ended up waiting for a cab for an hour and a half in the early hours of Sunday. I went to bed at 5, woke up at quarter to 3 in the afternoon, and then vacuumed and cleaned the bathroom. They had music in the third place we went to; we all had Jagermeister shots beforehand so we were dancing like crazy. Also I was so engrossed with seeing all these random people hooking up and kind of hard-core making out in the middle of everything. I kept staring; you know how in movies or something they have the shot from afar and then they sort of spiral in against the neon lights and the bass of the music and zoom into this boy and this girl who step closer and closer to each other and then they kiss? Something like that, only there is the slight smell of bile and kebab in the air, and it’s the alcohol, not the lighting, that makes everyone look so fucking gorgeous.

Shit. What do people do when they’re past 30 anyway? What the hell am I supposed to do then?!

ALSO!!! (shameless plugging alert)

Sel has an album out. An album! Fifteen years in the making! Well, we always knew she was going to get to do that anyways, reported resemblance to John Lennon/Gary Ignacio (?) notwithstanding. It’s now just a matter of rallying the troops, so. Please go and check out the Ang Bandang Shirley album; videos of their first single Themesong are also playing in Myx and MTV. I love this song. It’s just so happy. How can you not be happy after this? It’s like staring at two people falling in love three feet from each other in a crowded pub with music in the air, getting closer one step at a time for their first kiss.