Have you always wanted to see the editors of The Man Blog do something besides be fat, mean, and manly? Did you know that rock music is the evil spawn of Satan? Would you like to get your face melted off by overripe yellow bananas of awesome?

If your answer to all three questions is a YES, then head over to Bela Bar, Greenhills on May 3 where The Man Blog will be holding their first musical production ever - The Banana Gangbang Rock Festival.



Expect to be entertained by Gino Carteciano's poster-making skillz, Bim Barbieto's hosting skillz, and music from the bands of self-proclaimed internet celebrities Mike Villar, Ade Magnaye, Marco Palinar, and yours truly. And because I have sneakily snuck my way into Ade's band, I shall be playing with not one but two bands that evening (Zoo and Lose Your Beer Belly). Is that awesome or what?!

Tickets cost a hundred bucks and are consumable in the form of beer, women, or wet t-shirts (tits not included).

Don't know where Bela Bar is? Here's a map to the place.

Still not convinced? Here’s what people are saying about The Banana Gangbang Rock Festival. And by "people" I mean "the blogosphere's elite", so you better damn listen to what they have to say:

“Prepare to hold on to your lugnuts! Be there, or be scared!” – Steel Ventus

“Bring your own vaginas.” – Pau Araos

“Be there for this balls-busting, world-shattering, face-melting, death-defying ROCK… Thingy!” – Baddie

“BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! You’re bound to eargasm four times right there and right then! Heh.” – Fritz Tentativa

“There will be ass-tons of fucking and blowjobs and tits and balls and shit." - Coco Collantes

"I'm totally going there just to see Baddie in a wet t-shirt." - Ade Magnaye

“BWAKANGINANG PAKSHET KALA MO PUGE KA?” – Mike “Fucking Drunk” Villar

See you all on May 3!

I had been to Anawangin Cove only once and had a great time despite never having gone camping before. Of course the last time I was there, I was also with experienced campers, a car, a cooler, and had answers to questions like, "What's for dinner?" and "How are we going to keep the beer cold?" I was more than excited when I found out that the Hohobags, the Hohofags, plus Anne and Helga would be heading to Anawangin for the weekend. We all needed the beach but more than that, we all needed a vacation.

You'd think that the conflict of a camping story would be the man-vs-nature type but really, the problems we encountered were more like man-vs-man. Dealing with no cellphone signal and no electricity was the easy part. It was dealing with everyone else that was roughing it that took away the vacation-like quality of our vacation.

So maybe none of us have ever really gone camping before. So maybe we were only going to take a bus, and we weren't entirely sure how we were going to make dinner or keep our drinks cold. So maybe we got ditched by the very person who planned the trip. So what? How hard can it be? What kind of trouble can eight girls, two (gay) guys, and one missing mountaineer get themselves into on an isolated in the middle of nowhere?


Summertime, and the livin's easy. NOT.
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Apparently, we charlatan bloggers have made popularize ape-like copy-pasting skills. Or something.

It may not have been the most mature thing I've ever done, but I definitely do not regret starting this thread on the frivolities of a certain Filipino cosplayer.

God, I love the internet. XD

If I were born a boy, I bet I could make any girl fall in love with me by playing her this song on the guitar.



"To Her With Love" is the very song I think any girl would love to hear from a lover/potential lover, especially if she's standing on the brink of adulthood or some other major life change. There's an acknowledgment of the girl's maturity, intelligence, and independent streak. The persona also recognizes that she has the capacity and strength to become whatever she wants. (Tip: some girls fall harder for guys who tell them they're smart than for guys who tell them they're beautiful. So if the object of your desire is that type of girl, then you should definitely sing her this song.) At the same time, the persona points out that you (the girl to whom the song is addressed to) are going to realize that the world is a shitty place sooner rather than later. You are going to experience cruel cruel life firsthand. But don't despair, I'm here for you. Let me be the buffer that will soften the blow of reality because I love you and you are gorgeous.

On that note, never trust a guy who attempts to win you over with love songs.

Last Friday I lost one of my jobs. The US-based owner of one of the websites I wrote for pulled out his funding for the site because his real estate business is plummeting, which means that almost half of my monthly income just went kaput. >_< I spent that afternoon trying to get in touch with all the people I know in the industry who might be able to get me another writing gig. I've had two responses so far, but nothing definite yet.

Maybe it's the lack of caffeine in my system talking, but I've been spending the past half hour playing around with the idea of getting an office job again. It's not even about the money, because the pay's pretty shitty. But I kind of miss being in an office. Okay, ask me how I like working five months into the job and I'll probably say something like, "I am suffocating in my cubicle, get me the fuck out of here!" But I dunno... doing this freelance thing might pay more, but it's unreliable as hell. It's also lonely as hell too. Bugging people on YM is hardly social interaction.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm going freelance because I'm just too lazy/sensitive/whatever to slave away in an office like everybody else. Ok yeah, there's the grad school thing, but I have classmates in the MA program who do office work too.

So I'm going to make a list of pros and cons that I can look back or add to once I come back to my senses. Despite the crazy urge to walk into the HR Department of MBSTek and hand them my resume, the cons seem to be winning the battle. Though the fourth pro makes being an office whore very very tempting:

PROS:
1) Friends.
2) Steady source of income.
3) The company's going to take care of my taxes. So dreading having to go to the BIR myself and handing over a chunk of my money to our assfucking government.
4) I could slowly spread Marxist ideas among my coworkers and start a revolution.

CONS:
1) Work will eat up all my time.
2) Work might eat up all my brain power, leaving me none for school. (Although the opposite could also work true; work could kill my brain, leaving me desperate to revive it by doing something smart, like school work.)
3) Work will definitely eat up all my sanity. Stuff me in a cubicle longer than five hours and watch me explode like a tomato in a microwave.
4) Shitty pay as compared to freelance writing.

...I can look at it this way. He loves me, he wants a future with me, a life that isn't motivated by obligation, a love that neither of us will take for granted after making a promise to stay together forever and ever amen. If he wanted to walk away from me he could have do so, very easily. But he is still there, sometimes when I wake up, sometimes before I go to bed. Everyday he is there, for every neurotic episode he is there, for every small victory is there, I tell him the most trivial things about my day and he drinks it in like water, his cellphone runs out of money when I'm out for the night. Everyday he leaves to go to work, everyday I leave to go to university or to a gig or to go out to drink with friends. But everyday he comes back, and I come back.

I am sad because I may never get to wear a white wedding dress and walk down on an aisle strewn with pink rose petals, placed there by little girls in cupcake white dresses. But what is marriage anyway? To me it is the ultimate commitment, to him it is the worst thing you can do to the woman you love. I am trying to understand him. Objectively I can see where he is coming from. Sometimes, I think I just want to wear the white dress.

Why get married? I want to promise that I will go through the hellfires of domestic life and back for him. I think that, if he loves me, he will make that same promise. But isn't that what we are doing now? Making promises through our vocal chords with the wind. I want security, every woman does. But even if we make that same promise in front of a judge, he can still walk away if he really wanted to. And I can easily do the same to him.

I can't tell the future and neither can he. All I have to go on is the now and the reality I see. Everything's been consistent so far. When I get afraid, he dispels my fear of abandonment by showing up or calling me long distance to remind me that he loves me. I am not sorry for my fears but I am sorry they made him think that he's not doing enough. I am sorry that sometimes, I get too caught up in my worries to see what he does for me now, what he will do for me in a few months' time. I am sorry I made him sad tonight.

He loves me. Everything he does, he does out of his own free will. Not because some contract told him to. I need to remember that.

Puta I'm totally gayed out by the contents of my blog and my Twitter and my Eljay but I don't care, I'm happy. :D

Those were the most beautiful two minutes of my life.

Oh I do believe
In all the things you say
What comes is better than what came before

And youd better come come, come come to me
Better come come, come come to me
Better run, run run, run run to me
Better come

Oh I do believe
In all the things you say
What comes is better that what came before

And youd better run run, run run to me
Better run, run run, run run to me
Better come, come come, come come to me

Ok nothing more to see here, move along nao kids.

Reading RJ Ledesma's Lies My Yaya Should Have Told Me (which is really more about dating rather than, well, lies my yaya should have told me) made me feel immensely relieved about being fished of the murky waters that is the local dating pool. A little over a month ago I got myself into a very postmodern sort of relationship and for the past couple of weeks, I've been getting used to assuming the social role of "girlfriend" again (on top of balancing academics, work, and a social life).

Actually, scratch that. I can't stand using the word "girlfriend". I am nobody's goddamn girlfriend. To me, the word "girlfriend" brings to mind a sniveling, whining female who can't be away from her "boyfriend" for two minutes without collapsing like a helpless heroine in the tragic conclusion a bad romance novel, or without coming up with the most ridiculous accusations about how he probably found the opportunity to sleep with some ditz during the whole two minutes he was away. Sometimes the word "girlfriend" makes me think of a vapid, empty creature driven by PMS, irrational bursts of anger, and the need to shop shop shop - while having the boyfriend pay for everything and carry all the shopping bags because oh noes, my life is OVER if my pink nail polish gets so much as chipped.

I am so lucky that Alessandro isn't into that whole girlfriend-boyfriend label thing either.


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The downside of having friends who sometimes read your blog is that you can't blog about certain real-life events without risking getting kicked out of that social group. I'm going to take that risk anyway and write about this guy I spoke to last Friday. Besides being interesting enough to be blog-worthy, somewhere in here is a valuable lesson that may be useful the next time you go about trying to impress girls (or people in general).


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This is the story of your red right ankle

Life has a funny way of giving me what I want, and of all the many random things in my life, the proof that teenage romance doesn't die once you hit 21 is one of the greatest things to happen to me. What I love about my relationship with Ale is that it's got a healthy mixture of the maturity of adults and the insanity of idealistic youth. An outsider would probably think that our relationship is doomed to failure (I think some of my friends did when I first told them about it, and my mom's sitting on the fence). What could be more uncertain than a relationship that's intangible? If relationships between people in the same city are complicated enough, long distance relationships add another layer of complexity by virtue of the fact that the miles between you make it difficult to do things together and include each other in your lives.

And how it came to meet your leg

That's how an adult would think. Adults are afraid of the strange and unfamiliar because they want to have control over every single aspect of their lives. They stick to routine and view new developments as problems, difficulties, a disruption of the safe predictability of their lives. And once they identify a new thing as a problem, adults end up becoming too afraid to grab the opportunities for happiness that life throws at them and ultimately end up never doing what they really want.

And how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled
And how the skin was softly shed

Every relationship has their own set of difficulties and issues, and the distance problem pretty much falls under the same Relationship Problems Category as infidelity or communication issues. Actually, I'd rather have the distance problem than infidelity or communication issues. Once the trust has been broken and two people find it difficult to be completely open to each other - the relationship is dead, and living within driving distance from each other can't fix that.

And how it whispered “Oh, adhere to me

I never thought I'd say this but we've got Steve Jobs to thank for our relationship. No matter how busy we both are with our own lives, we find the time to talk on iChat (the Mac video chat service) every day. Last he got his bass and I got my guitar and we spent over two hours figuring out a bassline for a song Kristel and I wrote sometime last year. It was absolutely amazing. :) Every time we do stuff like that together, he doesn't feel so far away. That makes it difficult for me to rip myself away from my Macbook when he's there. At the same time, however, I love that I can still go about my regular routine and pursue what I want in life. I love that he's doing the same thing with his life.

For we are bound by symmetry

This relationship is teaching me that there's a big difference between giving up your life for someone (which is the fatal mistake I did in my last relationship) and integrating someone into your life (which is what I'm doing now). There's a difference between building your life around someone and modifying your Life Plans to make sure that that person is among your top priorities.

And whatever differences our lives have been

The best part about our relationship is that it's not going to be long distance forever. We gots plans! And I'm talking about real plans that that can actually come true because unlike teenagers, we're old enough to have spending power. (Oh adulthood, you are good for something after all!) The future is still a mighty uncertain thing of course, and I know that there's that slight chance that maybe it won't work out. But why focus all your energies on that slight chance when you can do so much to make it work?

We together make a limb.”

Oh and did I mention that he speaks four languages and he tutors me in Structuralism and he skates and he's progressive and open-minded and he means everything he says?

This Ale guy, I love him. <3

This is the story of your red right ankle.

This is the first poem I've ever written about anyone, for anyone. It's written in the modernist style. And by "the modernist style" I mean "I always thought that poetry was for sissies and girls and that I would never write one for as long as I live because I suck at writing poetry and I never pretended to be a poet in my life but I wrote Alessandro a poem anyway because I love him (Do you hear that, world? I LOVE HIM!!!) and he loved it so screw you, I don't care if you think otherwise."

( Click for the mushies. )

Think of a small bar, less than a hundred square meters wide and maybe about four hundred square meters long. It's so small even its roadside sign seems to apologize for its size; you won't be able to spot the place when you drive down Shaw Boulevard unless you know where to look. The bar doesn't have air conditioning. What it has for ventilation are three large windows, waist-high up until the ceiling. The windows have no glass nor a screen, giving you a clear view of the narrow gated alley beside the building.

You enter the bar through a glass door. In front of you is a stage. It's a very, very small place.

This is Cuerdas Bar. This is where I spend some of my Friday and Saturday evenings.

It's not the kind of place you and I would go to unless you have a friend or a boyfriend playing there tonight.

I am the only female in the room who isn't an audience member.


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Microtel Boracay
O hai sponsors sup?

If it were not for our lovely sponsors, I would not have spent last weekend with bloggers in Boracay. It's funny, because I've been to Boracay twice, and I don't believe I've spent more than a thousand pesos for both trips. The first time I was at Boracay, friends from Canada took care of plane fare, my hotel accommodations, and everything else I ate or drank. The plane fare and accommodations of last weekend's Blogger Boracay Trip was paid for by Seair and Microtel Boracay respectively, with dinner sponsored by Zuzuni on Saturday night. The only time I shelled out any money was when we went clubbing on Saturday night. Even then I didn't need to order too many drinks because we had some Absolut vodka beforehand, courtesy of the Microtel bar.

My life is made of awesome like that.


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If the verb "to emasculate" defines the act of chopping off a guy's nuts, what verb do you use to describe getting your ovaries snipped? By surgeons who learned surgery through the Wii? In front of the kitchen sink?

Last Monday, Anne and I randomly decided to cook something for the The Man Blog guys, girls, and friends using my mom's shiny kitchen. Not that the TMB dudes need to get fatter than they already are, but I figured that it's high time I learned how to cook. You see, I've always thought of myself as a closet housewife. I may be all, "You can't make me give up my life and career for you! *snap snap snap*" but I have this feeling that once I settle down, I'll most likely become a devoted wife and a suburban, pot-dealing soccer mom. Well, maybe minus the pot-dealing.

I'm weirdly traditional like that. Shut up.


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The other day, a good friend sent me a text message saying that she saw me in the December issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. What shocked me about this text message was not so much that I'm apparently in Cosmopolitan, but that this friend actually reads Cosmo in the first place. You see, she's a member of the NPA and well, I always stereotyped them to be...you know. NOT readers of Cosmopolitan magazine. I'm no socialist, but I'm iffy about the consumerist notion of the "good life" fed to us by mainstream media. I don't buy magazines and I most certainly don't read Cosmo, except when it's lying there in the salon. Then I only look at the fashion section and wish I was earning more money so I could spend my life spending like an obedient consumer.


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I just saw Enchanted with my parents this evening and despite it being a romantic movie, I left the theater feeling teh warm and fuzz of love. Brilliant storytelling, wonderful acting (James Marsden owns my panties), GORGEOUS costumes, very subtle and clever comedy. I was laughing so hard and so loudly that my mom, worried that an irate moviegoer would empty his/her popcorn bag on my head, had to elbow me in the ribs several times to make me shut up.

The movie made me realize two things about myself and life:

1) I'm a lot more like Giselle than I'd like to admit.

2) If growing up means losing your ability to be spontaneous and fun, and if adults really are incapable of loving whole-heartedly and without irony, then please...let me stay twelve years old forever. And if I can't find anyone who's as idealistic about romantic love as I am, then let me remain single and bear babies from random sperm donors. No dry, dull, boring grown-up men for me! But hey, no emotionally fucked-up boys allowed either. :P

Bought this t-shirt today and I am most in love. :D I've been eyeing it for the longest time and I don't know why I decided to buy it the day AFTER his death anniversary. It would've been way cooler if I had worn this last night.





Oh who cares, I'm wearing my John Lennon shirt to death all week. :D

There are a lot of disadvantages to being a girl. Besides the hassle of bleeding out of my crotch every month, I can't always go out in my favorite outfit - a shirt/tank top and a pair of shorts - unless I want to become a statistic. Whenever I attempt to leave the house at night with my legs showing, my parents make me march back up to my room and change into something more "decent". I try to reason with them by explaining I wear shorts because they're comfortable, and that my thunder thighs and peklat-ridden calves will deter any man from making a pass at me. They retort by saying, "Waling pinipili ang lalaking lasing." So I guess even having horrible legs won't keep me from becoming a rape victim. Fabulous.

But perhaps this single biggest disadvantage to being a girl is having breasts and making sure they receive ample support. No thanks to the ample boobage given to me by genetics, bra shopping is one of my least favorite activities in the world.


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