Fear the Asterisk! wahaha...

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Somebody keeps stealing the padlocks in our house.

It all started before Christmas, and so far they’ve managed to filch three of our locks. It’s actually more annoying than intimidating, as new locks are quite expensive (the good ones cost about 2 and half dollars, which is already a handful here in our country) and we have to update our keys every time it gets lost. So far we don't know who the culprit(s) is/are, although Mom says it's probably some of the bored kids roaming around the neighborhood, which kind of makes a lot more sense than my theory involving keymaker elves bent on a worldwide conspiracy to monopolize the padlock industry. But I'm still not taking the jumper cables off the gate though (hahaha just kidding*)

Green Beans

I’m not really a fan of podcasts. It’s not that I don’t like it though, it’s just that it would be just too much of a distraction for me while at work (where I am always online). So I found it quite odd that I would be in a café high above the city streets doing a podcast with Eph and Jaymee.

I’ve known Eph for about 4 years now, as he was my Editor-in-Chief during my stint in the college paper as well as being my spiritual confidant at church. And it was in our weekly group meeting that Eph asked me to guest in the next episode of their podcast Get Back to Work. And since I am always eager to try something new (as long as it doesn’t void my insurance benefits), I decided to give it a go.

There are three things which I learned during the podcast.

1. I have an accent. Being born in the Philippines, having a Filipino accent while speaking in English is expected. However, I have been speaking, writing, and talking to myself in English as long as I can remember, so I was a bit surprised that all those years hasn’t affected my accent that much. But it’s not that I am ashamed of it either, however it’s hard to be taken seriously when you're proclaiming your intentions of taking over the world to the terrified masses with a solid Bicolano twang.

2. I (apparently) have an unruly lifestyle. The episode in which I was to guest in was about whether personal organizers and New Year’s resolutions really work, and I was the one representing the ones who don’t. According to Eph, I was the only one he has found in time for that side. So unless I misquoted the E-man, it just proves that I am the only unorganized person in the city, or maybe even the planet. It just kind of makes me imagine myself as Will Smith in I Am Legend. Except that Will Smith is richer ... handsomer ... and manlier ... than me.

...

I think I'm just going to curl up in this corner here and weep for a while.

3. Pee before doing a podcast.

Overall, the podcast was nice and quite interesting. Heck, I might just even try it sometime, although I won't do it now as the technician will kill me if I choke up the bandwidth of the office network.

For those of you who want to know more about Eph and Jaymee’s Get Back to Work podcast, you can visit it at
http://getbacktowork.podbean.com. If you want to hear the episode with me in it or you're just looking for some juicy stuff to blackmail me in the future, just click this here link.

Thanks to Eph and Jaymee for the opportunity.

EDIT:

Da**it, I sound like Borat. Very nice!

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.