Screwed

I suffer from chronic depression. When you're a lanky, post-adolescent recluse with a screwy childhood, I guess it comes complimentary. It's kind of an on-and-off thing: one moment I'm bright and chipper, and the next thing you know the last two factors that are stopping me from killing myself is a lack of a firearm and a deep-seated fear of God. (Yes, there are other methods of self-execution, but medical studies show that a gunshot wound to the head is the quickest and most effective way to die). And right now I'm going through the same motions again, although now without much of the bells and whistles that was so prevalent during my teenage angst/emo years.

There are a lot of things that led me into this recent ticket to the dumps. Work, love, and a sense of personal lacking are the main reasons why, with the L-word taking up the lion's share. But I will no longer elaborate on these. Aside from the fact that I am a man who takes his privacy seriously, poking at one's emotional wounds will only make it heal longer. But nevertheless, the pain still heals at a snail's pace, and it tends to leave a scar in your mind. Sometimes I even wonder if I still have places in my brain which haven't been scarred at all.

So right now, in the same way as I treat most things in my life, I'm just winging it until it finally blows over. One good thing about having chronic depression is that it tends to get old over time, and you take it with much bitter stride. I even find it quite silly at certain moments, although I just wish I would stop thinking of shooting myself that much.

Pain is a Pain in the...

My wisdom teeth is to acting up again, and thanks to that I'm going to have to do 9 articles today. It's not really that hard actually(I think I made 10 articles once in one sitting), but that was motivated by a 4-figure incentive and not by a pair of attention-deficit third molars. The pain is somewhat bearable, but I'm thinking of finally availing of that dental plan in the health card I just got from HR, but since the teeth are still midway inside my gums, I'll just have to wing it until it subsides.

Anyway, back to them fuel injectors.

Life, Love, and Death at the Crossing

I consider myself a rather serious gamer, and as most serious gamers know the word "heartwarming" is that not easy to find in video games. And so it was therefore in my collective surprise that I stumbled upon an article in Penny Arcade about a heartwarming webcomic of the Animal Crossing video game. After much digging around (with the help of Google), I managed to find the offending (or should I say, heartwarming?) culprit and checked it out to see its worth.

And in my opinion, it was worth a few good words. Plus a few tears if you can afford to.

(please click to enlarge)

I don't play Animal Crossing (not by choice, but rather by lack of a Gamecube in which to play it), but it doesn't take one to play the game in order to understand the poignancy of this strip. Being a gamer myself, I know how difficult it is to find a middle ground for both children and parents to step on when it comes to video games. But this one just goes beyond that awkwardity and shows that despite the hoopla regarding in-game violence and immorality, video games can be a fun and touching way in which a family can connect to one another. This is especially true in this age where the devices that can keep us connected can also keep us apart.

And so, with a lack of a suitable phrase to end this post/pseudo-review, I shall quote the final words on the strip:

Show your parents as much love as you can, while you still can.

Dog Piss

I hate bathing at night. There is nothing more traumatizing than stripping down to your bare essentials in the cold of night and dousing yourself in even colder water. Every time I swing that dipper over my head, I feel like my brain cells are getting shorted out by lightning. So every time I head for the bathroom at 9 in the evening with towel and soap in hand, I better have a damn good reason for it. And last night, the reason was because I smelled like dog piss.

The boarding house where I stay in here in Legazpi has a dog named Claus (My uncle, the landlord, found him on Christmas Day). And just like his namesake, Claus likes to give. Except that it comes in ammonia, nitrogen, and other stuff that dog kidneys make. But I really can't blame him; the fella is basically locked up inside the boarding house all day. But when you wake up to a glorious Tuesday morning and find that the dog left you a very smelly present on the doorstep, sympathy tends to vanish hard and fast. I'm a self-confessed animal lover, but it takes all of my mental faculties just to stop myself from whacking the dog every time he pisses on the doorway. And now I just consider myself lucky that he peed on the kitchen floor after dinner; at least I have the time to clean it up and go to sleep without holding the urge to puke every time I inhale. But then again, it's hard to consider oneself lucky if he's going to clean up dog piss. It just makes me want to blow up inside, or at least take a bath at night.

Bitter Coincidence on 7 Wheels

The conductor slowly inched his way to the back of the bus , taking the fares as he did. And as he came nearer and nearer to where I stood, I became uncomfortable, wishing that he would just go away. But as he came at arm's length he stared at me, with the gaze resembling that of a man who goes around asking bus fares. I would have humored him though, if it were not for the fact that I was literally stuck in what seems to be a dozen reasonably large and unreasonably sweaty men, each struggling to hold tight in the bus as it rumbled about in the road. Is he friggin' crazy? I asked myself. And just how the hell am I going to get my wallet outta this mess?

But then again, I realized that it was my idea in the first place to ride an overcrowded bus which is running with one blown tire in the middle of the countryside at 9 in the evening.

And so, with despair and through somewhat remarkable contortion skills, I got my wallet out of my pocket and handed my fare.