2008 was shit. Nothing good came out of it except for the Olympics and Obama's election.

Here's hoping 2009 would be kinder.

Happy New Year everyone.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THE LAKERS?

Two weeks ago they were on pace to win 70 games.

Now they've lost two straight.

Boston's now on pace to win 70.

What the fuck is wrong with the Lakers?

For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough
Charles Bukowski

I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of two gone quite mad
without a chance,
hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I lean upon this,
I lean on all of this
and I know
her dress upon my arm
but
they will not
give her back to me.

"The reason [poetry] is not appreciated is because it hasn't shown any guts."
-Charles Bukowski

Lord, please grant me and the rest of America a win for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

You have Your eyes on this country, and you've tested its mettle for the past eight years. Please help everyone making this crucial decision tomorrow think of what's best for them and the people around them. We cannot afford four more years of failed conservative policies.

[edited 11-04-2008, 8:49PM]
Thank you, Lord. :)
[/change]

Cross-posted in my multiply.

"The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you, unlike any schooling you've ever been through before. We use the Socratic method here; I call on you, ask you a question, and you answer it. Why don't I just give you a lecture? Because through my questions you learn to teach yourselves.Through this method of questioning, answering, questioning, answering, we seek to develop in you the ability to analyze that vast complex of facts that constitute the relationships of members within a given society. Questioning and answering. At times you may feel you have found the correct answer. I assure you this is a total delusion on your part. You will never find the correct, absolute and final answer. In my classroom there is always another question, another question to follow your answer, as you're on a treadmill. My little questions spin the tumblers of your mind. They're on the operating table. My little questions are the fingers probing your brain. We do brain surgery here. You teach yourselves the law, but I train your mind. You come in here with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer."

-Professor Charles Kingsfield (played by John Houseman)

Astig. Now I understand why I botched my case briefs for Palko v. Connecticut and Rochin v. California. They were just not good enough. Bawi nalang sa Pentagon Papers.

Sarah Palin, when asked by CBS News' Katie Couric ON NATIONAL TELEVISION to give specific examples of how John McCain pushed for more regulation in his 26 years in the senate:

"I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you"

What's worse than a conservative? A DUMB conservative. Har har!

I'll be looking forward to tomorrow night's Vice-Presidential debates. I will watch with glee as Joe Biden (who you would not call a man of few words) eats her up alive. She claims that Alaska's proximity to Russia is enough to warrant her some foreign policy experience, while her opponent lives, eats, and breathes foreign policy. She is fighting a futile battle against someone whom I call the Joker Arroyo of American politics. With Joe Biden, kung bad ka, lagot ka!

This is gonna be a lot of fun.

PUTANGINA! CHAMPION NANAMAN!

This year's team is probably one of the most cohesive, dynamic squads ever assembled. And remember, we have almost the whole team back next year except of course for Chris (thank you thank you for five awesome years) and Yuri (thank you thank you for locking down opposing point guards). MVP Rabeh will be back and so will "Tapal King" Baclao.

I still remember when we won it all back in '02. I was lucky enough to score tickets for Game 1 (where Fonacier blocked Cardona twice!) and the Game 2 loss. It was next to impossible trying to score tickets for the final game, so I had to settle for the TV. I can clearly remember Quimpo hitting the three-pointer to blow that game wide open with 2 minutes left, and myself falling on my knees in front of the TV screen.

This one, of course, was just as sweet.

I finally came across a website that streamed the game live, since TFC is just too expensive to get, especially for only one show. Even from a thousand miles away, the tension and the intensity were just too much, especially when La Salle cut the lead to three with ten minutes left. What followed was one of the sloppiest 4th quarters I've ever seen, but by the time it ended, at 4:00am local time, I found myself with outstretched arms screaming while the rest of LA was sleeping, "PUTANGINA! CHAMPION NANAMAN!"

Thank you Blue Eagles for a magical season. 15-1 is just way way beyond anybody's expectations.
Thank you Coach Norman for molding the boys into champions.
Thank you to my fellow Ateneans out there who cheered their hearts out in Araneta and in front of their TVs!

Dare I say it? PUTANGINA! CHAMPION NANAMAN!

I'm currently reading Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. 87 pages into the book I can easily say that it's one of the most well-written novels I've read, along with Catcher In The Rye and Her by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. And it's pretty heavy, too. Actually, VERY heavy. I was reading it on the train to and from school today, and honestly there were times when I went sniff-sniff at the amazing lines from the text.

Graham Greene is a fucking genius. The way he interspersed the question of God's existence with an illicit yet true romantic love plus the occasional quibbles on the craft of novel writing (since Bendrix, the protagonist, is also a writer) is way beyond me. The music lover in me tells me that it reminds me of the Metallica song "The God that Failed" because it's exactly what Bendrix feels in most of the book. The God that failed to heal. Don't get me wrong: I love God more than anything or anyone in this world, but this book really touches on the question of His existence more vividly than even the discourses of Gabriel Marcel.

I see a lot of myself and my feelings and realizations in Bendrix. I think of his own notions of romantic love and how he feels that those notions are the only neaningful ones, and no other notions, even the love for a Divine who is invisible yet all-knowing, can compare. Time and time again I've liked girls who were taken, and for a time I thought the streak would never end. I thought of their lovers the way Bendrix thought of Henry; dull, boring, couldn't do jack shit. However, the Bendrix trait which I can closely relate to the most is the fact that he THINKS he's a strong, steadfast person whose desire and hatred consume him in the heat of the moment he feels them, a person who can feel sympathy one minute and resentment the next. But in Sarah's presence, all that strong will, all that pent-up desire and hatred are quickly snuffed out. "I have never known a woman before or since so able to alter a whole mood by simply speaking on the telephone," Bendrix writes. Sarah brings equilibrium to his state of mind. Her presence alone makes him vulnerable and detached from everything else, yet it's also because of her that he harbors the extremes towards Henry.

For all its beauty, this was the book I feared reading. Feared in a sense that I can already anticipate the slap in the face once I reach the denouement, my own life story and everything about the idea of romantic love I've screwed up flashing before my eyes through the lines of the text, that "putangina wag mo nang ipaalala" moment. I've only felt that way once after reading a novel, and that was Catcher in the Rye.

If anything, it did more to challenge my notions of romantic love rather than my spirituality as a hardline believer in liberation theology. Thank you Lord.

------------------

And, on a lighter note:

My latest celebrity crush, Sonya Aurora Madan, lead vocalist of indie Brit-Rock band Echobelly.


Pwede pakasal tayo?

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

NUMBER 1: In case you've been living under a rock for the last 8 years, America has been ULTRACONSERVATIVE under the Bush administration. Why do you think tax cuts have only been exercised for big business? And racist immigration policies being enacted? America has NEVER been liberal under Bush. Never. And that's why the economy and society are down the drain.

NUMBER 2: Throw out the big government liberals as prescription for change? Fuck off. It's actually conservative politics which every American needs to dispose of. The prescription for change is right under your Republican noses and you never even realized it..the Democrats did. The REAL prescription for change includes universal health care for BOTH Americans and immigrants, tax cuts for BOTH the MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES, tax increases for big businesses, AMNESTY for undocumented immigrants without criminal records, and sending the troops home from Iraq. If that isn't change, I don't know what is.

NUMBER 3: McCain and Palin will lose. America has had enough of backward, cave-dwelling conservative policies. It's time for a change and only Barack Obama and Joe Biden can provide that change.

Fuck conservatism. I am left, liberal and proud of it.