Now, when I was younger I thought it safe to blurt out the very open ended yet cliched seasonal slogan "It's that time of year again" and expected that it would ring the same nostalgic bell in everybody's brain and wallet that it's Christmas; but 10 years, 1 puberty stage and a Niagara Fall's worth of cold showers later and I realize that it could mean other, less pleasurable things, and end up ringing bells in other people's lives that would make faecal matter fly out of their back ends faster than the elf Santa caught groping Mrs. Claus.
Examples of such events would be child support collection date, annual couple's time at the state prison or the one time of the year the menstrual fairy visits that special girl with the very irregular cycle.
Fortunately none of those apply to me, but the one event that does is worse than all three of them put together, pressed down, shaken together, put in a shotgun and shot with it. This device of evil i'm talking about is exams. Funny thing about exams is that if you use chat speak, you could actually get the word "xams" out of "xmas", unfortunately that's about the only thing funny about them. To most they're the minor hindrance on the fun times. To me, they're like herpes - everybody has them, one form or another and they come out at least three time a year with minor breakouts in-between. You can apply all the cream you want before they arrive but as surely as the sun rises from the north, they come, and you MUST go through your time of pain, itchiness and unmitigated unattractiveness before they clear up and you feel comfortable around people again.
I'm not saying that exams are a bad idea (well actually, I am) but i'm sure there are other ways of proving that you know stuff. Take my ex girlfriend for example - we'd start off well enough on an argument but from the time she realises she's losing the hits the clutch and kicks in panic gear and goes on to babble on about ancient Mayans and why China didn't invent the steel pan and other sociological hob nobbery. Meanwhile I stand there, listening (strangely) and by the time she's done I give her the win and in my quiet time (post conflict) I reflect on just how knowledgeable she is about... that stuff and how perfectly right it sounds. While this fills my head, I totally forget the fact that that we were arguing about why it's wrong to randomly poke people in the rectum.
Which brings me to my proposal. Instead of stretching the fabric of human sanity by forcing us to regurgitate the integral of x divided by used toilet paper, give us a podium, a glass of water and let us ramble on before a panel of University professors who wear fuzzy sweaters and find everything terribly fascinating. If our yapping sounds like we could convince a crowd of natives to plant poisonous plants in their children's play area or use a hand grenade to knock out that shaky tooth or give their senior citizens nuclear powered Gundam suits, then let us proceed to the next semester. If not, and by not, I mean if a person sounds like they've sneezed out a chunk of brain while guzzling down a pint of Vat 19 on a Dentist's chair in the middle of a root canal, then give him the failing grade and tell him to come back when he's learned not to go to dentists ;).
Politicians do it, and look how far they've reached.
If you don't want to do it that way, then give us a check list containing all of the topics we've covered for that course and let us tick off the things that we're sure we know how to do. I promise we'll be honest :D. If we lie, then rest assured that our employers and our wives would teach us a lesson when we get older, get a job and something goes wrong at work and we don't know whether to integrate by second order or run like hell. Subsequently we lose the job and come home to find our belongings keeping the lawn furniture's company and a man named Ted with a rather hairy chest standing in our doorway with our wives wrapped around him like a hot towel. The metaphor of my life... sigh... Anyway!
We better find another way of testing our knowledge in our respective areas of study before I put the gun to my head and the hammer slams down on the only chamber with the live round in it.
Take me as an example of what human sanity looks like when it reaches its elastic limit - my first exam is on Monday and I have completely lost my compass of priority and where the toilet is. I spent the entire day stacking my DVD collection and peeing in shoes. This is the result of a pretty hard semester; a semester where my lecturers crammed so much work up my tailpipe that any thought I had of having fun had to tiptoe past my lecturer's laser pointer. My brain has completely shut down at a rather inconvenient time I must admit. Is this what genius is all about? I could do those things if I were selling blue crabs to tourists on Red square or vying to become the world's best scab collector. Mind you I don't want to stop pursuing my fancy-pants degree as a Computer Engineer to do either, but me and the other heathens in the world have the same worded question on our minds - there has to be another way (mine pertains to an alternative to exams, theirs pertains to avoiding partying with the guy downstairs).
Look, at the end of it all, exams are something that we have been faced with since the age of three or four (I don't know about you but my prep school had finals) and it hasn't harmed us till this day (except for the guy that jumped off of UWI or the dude that hung himself over CAPE. That wasn't a joke by the way). The point is we all have to do them and score really high, so that our "intellectual superiors" can sleep well at night knowing that their past postponements of suicide wasn't in vain. The only way to get through them is to develop discipline and work hard at it, and in the end we only turn out better and slightly more eccentric individuals with twitches, paranoia and/or other slight mental defects. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stranger, right?.
It still doesn't change the fact that finals and the concept of school are still worse ideas than a sleepover at Freddy Kruger's, though.
Good luck in exams everybody.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Trimming the Fat? Careful Where You Snip
Now we all know what Facebook is by now - a single point on the graph map of the internet where millions of people, with millions of friends while away hours of their day looking at statuses, relationship drama or the pics one of their so-called friends posted of them from the party the other night when they were drunk, stripped down to their underwear, defecating in wine glasses and straddling the lamp stand.
It's no doubt that www.facebook.com has become so popular that people are wondering why they're not making keyboards with just the w, ., f, a, c, e, b, o, k and m keys since navigating to that website is all that the computer's uses have been widdled down to over the past year. No need for quad core processors, 1gb graphics cards and X-fi speakers, give me a keyboard with 10 keys, a browser, a mouse and a pocket full of "I don't care about outside" and i'm set for all of my daily functions.
Now the main purpose of facebook was to keep in touch with people you already know - share pics, see what's going on in each other's lives and generally stay in the know with people in your network. But (I know you shouldn't start a sentence with but, but) as surely as zombies love brains, boys (and some men) love the p-word that i'm not allowed to say, and facebook is proving to be a sure means of bloaks potentially grabbing some of that thing that makes the world go round.
Chances are, that a male in a network of friends, some of whom might be female might have the luck of being the town whore like that guy from Nastaja's Calabria 2007 video or the town Haunch back like that guy from that animated film that I never saw. One way or another, they're going to get bored of the same old same old (whether it be "ease of access" or successive, unrelenting and hardcore rejection) and they're going to venture outside of their little group and start hunting sheep from another shepherd's flock; in other words, they add random pretty little things that they know nothing about, and the said pretty little things innocently accept the lustful friend request. You know the friend request is lustful because there's usually a bulge a little below the waist of the "+1 Friend" icon.
So now that your "target" has accepted the request it's time to put your game face on and play the waiting game. You log in to the site and pretend to be tending to your business while waiting for your "target" to come online. When she does, the conversation bit can begin. I don't need to go into the ass-crack of this process since i'm sure most of you know how it goes. The end result can be one of two things:
1. The convo went well and you eagerly await her next appearance online
2. The convo went horribly and you eagerly await her next appearance online to redeem yourself
No matter which, you leave your target on your friends list hoping and waiting for the day that you finally get some of that sweet stuff. Unfortunately for some, the day never comes.
As time passes and this process of trial and blue balls repeats, your friends list becomes a mixed bag of people that you know to a T, and others that you won't be able to identify in a crowd unless they have their profile picture taped to the part of their head where their face should be.
Get me wrong, not, strangers can end up on your friends list by other means such as mistaken identity (especially if you're one those tards that hid your profile info from search) or by pure peer pressure when a friend of a friend adds you. On that last point - why do they do that? Where does that compulsion to add you, a perfect stranger to them, come from? They always leave me with the difficult choice of unwillingly accepting, or rejecting and running the risk of having that person go back to the person I actually know and tell them that I'm a long streak of piss because I don't accept requests from "people". Knowing some of my friends, they might actually turn on me because I didn't accept their friend as a friend. Ridiculous, I know.
At any rate, at one time or another, there comes a point in every facebook-er's career when he must clean up that friends list and weed out the scraps. That time came for me today.
I realized that it's all dinner and strippers when you have to add people but when the deletion time rolls around, I deliberate on touching that "x" button more than deliberating whether or not to wear pants to leave the house on a morning. Deleting these "extended" friends tends to put a strain on friendships.
First off was the "failed attempts" group. Deleting them was easy for very obvious reasons. Next was the "mistaken identity" section, then came the "spoke to a few times, never really hit it off" set, then the "friend of a friend" section. The friend of a friend section was difficult because of the aforementioned complications of word getting around to my actual acquaintances. In some instances I said bollocks to that and hit the "x" harder than a white boy at a rave. In other cases, they remained there, the warts on my friends list's buttox. My success with "other ventures" remains hinged on their existence on my list.
The next category is a VERY touch and go one. One wrong deletion and it could mean some friendships that would end faster than a fight with a monkey. The category in statement is the *long inhale* "We went to school together, we weren't that close at school but you added me on facebook but we haven't really talked since then and now I have to delete you" group.
These are the people that you met already, be it through a friend or a glance and they added you on this crackbook or you, them. Since you added them you haven't really spoken to them or been very interested in their well being or recent activities even though they've probably been in every party you've been to over the past several months. You just don't really care about these people that much to have their life stories cluttering your activity feed. Come on, you have more interesting people's business to mind ;)
I really have to be careful when trimming the fat in this layer because I could be passing the shears next to a very vital organ and not know it. If you happen to be in this quandary, do as I do: label them as hot rocks and let them be. They're just occupying space, not spitting in your tea and passing it off as cream. Sooner or later, they might delete you and save you the headache.
I'm saying this because I once deleted someone from this category and in about three days time, they added me back with the personal message "Why did you delete me?" then there was this conversation as awkward and jerky as a virgin's first time. This convo lasted seven painful minutes, and I hope never to relive them ever again.
At the end of it all, my friends list is clean. Not spotless, but sanitised. Before it was as sludgy and black as the Beetham swamps, but at least now it has that dingy brown colour your water has when it now comes back. A much better state, I must admit.
So what was the purpose of this note? Well I'd say it was just something to bide my time until my next engagement, but I suppose it can be a lesson to you - yet another excuse for your conscience to kick in before you do something trivial. Use it as a yard stick fro cleaning out the old friends list of yours, ridding it of the vermin of unknown people (yes I called people vermin) and in the process having less chunks in your straw when sucking up all the juicy gossip on your activity feed.
It's no doubt that www.facebook.com has become so popular that people are wondering why they're not making keyboards with just the w, ., f, a, c, e, b, o, k and m keys since navigating to that website is all that the computer's uses have been widdled down to over the past year. No need for quad core processors, 1gb graphics cards and X-fi speakers, give me a keyboard with 10 keys, a browser, a mouse and a pocket full of "I don't care about outside" and i'm set for all of my daily functions.
Now the main purpose of facebook was to keep in touch with people you already know - share pics, see what's going on in each other's lives and generally stay in the know with people in your network. But (I know you shouldn't start a sentence with but, but) as surely as zombies love brains, boys (and some men) love the p-word that i'm not allowed to say, and facebook is proving to be a sure means of bloaks potentially grabbing some of that thing that makes the world go round.
Chances are, that a male in a network of friends, some of whom might be female might have the luck of being the town whore like that guy from Nastaja's Calabria 2007 video or the town Haunch back like that guy from that animated film that I never saw. One way or another, they're going to get bored of the same old same old (whether it be "ease of access" or successive, unrelenting and hardcore rejection) and they're going to venture outside of their little group and start hunting sheep from another shepherd's flock; in other words, they add random pretty little things that they know nothing about, and the said pretty little things innocently accept the lustful friend request. You know the friend request is lustful because there's usually a bulge a little below the waist of the "+1 Friend" icon.
So now that your "target" has accepted the request it's time to put your game face on and play the waiting game. You log in to the site and pretend to be tending to your business while waiting for your "target" to come online. When she does, the conversation bit can begin. I don't need to go into the ass-crack of this process since i'm sure most of you know how it goes. The end result can be one of two things:
1. The convo went well and you eagerly await her next appearance online
2. The convo went horribly and you eagerly await her next appearance online to redeem yourself
No matter which, you leave your target on your friends list hoping and waiting for the day that you finally get some of that sweet stuff. Unfortunately for some, the day never comes.
As time passes and this process of trial and blue balls repeats, your friends list becomes a mixed bag of people that you know to a T, and others that you won't be able to identify in a crowd unless they have their profile picture taped to the part of their head where their face should be.
Get me wrong, not, strangers can end up on your friends list by other means such as mistaken identity (especially if you're one those tards that hid your profile info from search) or by pure peer pressure when a friend of a friend adds you. On that last point - why do they do that? Where does that compulsion to add you, a perfect stranger to them, come from? They always leave me with the difficult choice of unwillingly accepting, or rejecting and running the risk of having that person go back to the person I actually know and tell them that I'm a long streak of piss because I don't accept requests from "people". Knowing some of my friends, they might actually turn on me because I didn't accept their friend as a friend. Ridiculous, I know.
At any rate, at one time or another, there comes a point in every facebook-er's career when he must clean up that friends list and weed out the scraps. That time came for me today.
I realized that it's all dinner and strippers when you have to add people but when the deletion time rolls around, I deliberate on touching that "x" button more than deliberating whether or not to wear pants to leave the house on a morning. Deleting these "extended" friends tends to put a strain on friendships.
First off was the "failed attempts" group. Deleting them was easy for very obvious reasons. Next was the "mistaken identity" section, then came the "spoke to a few times, never really hit it off" set, then the "friend of a friend" section. The friend of a friend section was difficult because of the aforementioned complications of word getting around to my actual acquaintances. In some instances I said bollocks to that and hit the "x" harder than a white boy at a rave. In other cases, they remained there, the warts on my friends list's buttox. My success with "other ventures" remains hinged on their existence on my list.
The next category is a VERY touch and go one. One wrong deletion and it could mean some friendships that would end faster than a fight with a monkey. The category in statement is the *long inhale* "We went to school together, we weren't that close at school but you added me on facebook but we haven't really talked since then and now I have to delete you" group.
These are the people that you met already, be it through a friend or a glance and they added you on this crackbook or you, them. Since you added them you haven't really spoken to them or been very interested in their well being or recent activities even though they've probably been in every party you've been to over the past several months. You just don't really care about these people that much to have their life stories cluttering your activity feed. Come on, you have more interesting people's business to mind ;)
I really have to be careful when trimming the fat in this layer because I could be passing the shears next to a very vital organ and not know it. If you happen to be in this quandary, do as I do: label them as hot rocks and let them be. They're just occupying space, not spitting in your tea and passing it off as cream. Sooner or later, they might delete you and save you the headache.
I'm saying this because I once deleted someone from this category and in about three days time, they added me back with the personal message "Why did you delete me?" then there was this conversation as awkward and jerky as a virgin's first time. This convo lasted seven painful minutes, and I hope never to relive them ever again.
At the end of it all, my friends list is clean. Not spotless, but sanitised. Before it was as sludgy and black as the Beetham swamps, but at least now it has that dingy brown colour your water has when it now comes back. A much better state, I must admit.
So what was the purpose of this note? Well I'd say it was just something to bide my time until my next engagement, but I suppose it can be a lesson to you - yet another excuse for your conscience to kick in before you do something trivial. Use it as a yard stick fro cleaning out the old friends list of yours, ridding it of the vermin of unknown people (yes I called people vermin) and in the process having less chunks in your straw when sucking up all the juicy gossip on your activity feed.
Prepare for Payne
This entry contains spoilers about the Max Payne film currently in theaters. It's also a fanboy rant, so uninterested parties can stop reading right about... now!
Ok so in case you didn't know, I recently went to see the new Max Payne movie that Fox produced. Yes, I went - it was a Friday and I went all by myself. Just for the record it was a personal decision, and I won't appreciate anybody who saw me at the Cineplex last Friday (walking around like the grim reaper of fun) making fun of me.
All insecurities aside, let's get down to the marrow of the article and that is, how was it?
One word - PAYNEful! (Don't laugh) After the movie was finished I couldn't help but wonder if the opening line was aimed at the audience to prepare them for the hour and a half long gritty, grimey turd that was wrapped elegantly on the film reel instead of the actual movie. A prank portrayed by a masochistic joker who gets his willys off of PISSING ME OFF!
Let's start with the facts:
The movie was based off of the first installment of the Max Payne series. Us fanboys should know how this plays off, but for the wanks who haven't played it yet, buy the game or look for a synopsis somewhere. (Gotta love the lead-on haha)
First off, let's do a comparison as to how 'close' the movie characters were to their video game counterparts:
Michelle Payne (Max's Wife)
Game: About 5'5", 28-32, blonde, straight, short-cut hair. Gave birth to a girl
Movie: About 5''6", 28-32, brunette, long, wavy hair. Gave birth to a boy
Jim Bravura
Game: 5'10", 54-65, White, Spokesperson for AA
Movie: 5'7", 28-32, Black, Has rap career
Mona Sax
She was close
Max Payne
Game: 6'6", 38-42, White, Blissfully naive
Movie: 5'8", 35-40, White, Bit of a jerk
As if that wasn't enough, the story was the further from the game than a middle-aged mom in the suburbs.
Trivia:
Max, at the beginning of the first game, was a ranking DEA detective. He was not a recluse working in a cubby hole at the local police precinct filing papers in the "Cold Case" department. Though not the brightest of sunbeams, Max was never regarded as the "office weirdo" or "that guy". Though people knew he was two shakes short of a lamb's tail, he still had friends in his department and on the force.
Though Max (in the second game) called a sex hotline, he was never closely associated with Russian prostitutes. Nor, in either of the games was a suspect in a "whore murder" case. He seemed to have more sinister deeds on his criminal record, such as being wanted for blowing away an entire office building of mobsters by himself and shooting a lady cop in the chest. The police never chased Max for the alleged murder of a prostitute he kicked out of his apartment after not having sex with her.
Max also quit smoking just before leaving the office to go home on the same night his family was murdered. He NEVER took the Vlkyr drug!!!
Jack Lupino was a crazed drug user and mob boss. He did not hang out on rooftops stalking prostitutes and/or cutting people up with machetes. I would have quicker associated Frankie "The Bat" Niagara with that kind of scene. Though hatterly insane, Jack was not an axe murderer. He spent his days dispatching orders to mob whimps such as the Finito brothers and dining on the flesh of fallen angels.
Lt. Jim Bravura was a man on the downhill side of the age hill. He beat the bottle and became the spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous by the time the second game roller around. He was also Max's direct superior and was not an internal affairs officer and part time rapper. He worked in the same department as Max.
In the game, bullet time was supposed to simulate an exaggeration of how your body works on adrenaline i.e. the enemies moved slower while you moved at more or less normal speed. Bullet time was not a major slow-down that caused you to spend two minutes just pumping a shotgun, giving a guy enough time to squeeze three shots off at you.
At the end of the first game, Max shot Nicole Horne's chopper down. She died in the subsequent explosion - the game did not end with the murder of a fat sweaty guy in an overcoat.
Now these are all the things that were out of synch (that I can remember), but when the writers could get such basic things as the gender of Max's child right, I have to ask the question of whether or not anybody ever even played the game before putting posterior to paper to write the script.
Sheesh, now I know how you tossers felt after watching the Doom movie.
I say they should have let Fergle make his movie. I bet the folks at Fox feel like a gymnast that tries to show off with a fancy flip and lands awkwardly on his head. I feel like that ominous mother figure that stands over your bleeding body wagging a finger, after you impale yourself doing the same thing she ordered you not to do - You see, Fox? I told you you should have let Gibson have his film, now you're a few million dollars poorer, a few haters richer and your company review rating is as middle of the road as a confused deer on a night time highway.
Mr. Gibson, sir, I wish you all the best - show the internet what a real Max Payne movie is about.
Ok so in case you didn't know, I recently went to see the new Max Payne movie that Fox produced. Yes, I went - it was a Friday and I went all by myself. Just for the record it was a personal decision, and I won't appreciate anybody who saw me at the Cineplex last Friday (walking around like the grim reaper of fun) making fun of me.
All insecurities aside, let's get down to the marrow of the article and that is, how was it?
One word - PAYNEful! (Don't laugh) After the movie was finished I couldn't help but wonder if the opening line was aimed at the audience to prepare them for the hour and a half long gritty, grimey turd that was wrapped elegantly on the film reel instead of the actual movie. A prank portrayed by a masochistic joker who gets his willys off of PISSING ME OFF!
Let's start with the facts:
The movie was based off of the first installment of the Max Payne series. Us fanboys should know how this plays off, but for the wanks who haven't played it yet, buy the game or look for a synopsis somewhere. (Gotta love the lead-on haha)
First off, let's do a comparison as to how 'close' the movie characters were to their video game counterparts:
Michelle Payne (Max's Wife)
Game: About 5'5", 28-32, blonde, straight, short-cut hair. Gave birth to a girl
Movie: About 5''6", 28-32, brunette, long, wavy hair. Gave birth to a boy
Jim Bravura
Game: 5'10", 54-65, White, Spokesperson for AA
Movie: 5'7", 28-32, Black, Has rap career
Mona Sax
She was close
Max Payne
Game: 6'6", 38-42, White, Blissfully naive
Movie: 5'8", 35-40, White, Bit of a jerk
As if that wasn't enough, the story was the further from the game than a middle-aged mom in the suburbs.
Trivia:
Max, at the beginning of the first game, was a ranking DEA detective. He was not a recluse working in a cubby hole at the local police precinct filing papers in the "Cold Case" department. Though not the brightest of sunbeams, Max was never regarded as the "office weirdo" or "that guy". Though people knew he was two shakes short of a lamb's tail, he still had friends in his department and on the force.
Though Max (in the second game) called a sex hotline, he was never closely associated with Russian prostitutes. Nor, in either of the games was a suspect in a "whore murder" case. He seemed to have more sinister deeds on his criminal record, such as being wanted for blowing away an entire office building of mobsters by himself and shooting a lady cop in the chest. The police never chased Max for the alleged murder of a prostitute he kicked out of his apartment after not having sex with her.
Max also quit smoking just before leaving the office to go home on the same night his family was murdered. He NEVER took the Vlkyr drug!!!
Jack Lupino was a crazed drug user and mob boss. He did not hang out on rooftops stalking prostitutes and/or cutting people up with machetes. I would have quicker associated Frankie "The Bat" Niagara with that kind of scene. Though hatterly insane, Jack was not an axe murderer. He spent his days dispatching orders to mob whimps such as the Finito brothers and dining on the flesh of fallen angels.
Lt. Jim Bravura was a man on the downhill side of the age hill. He beat the bottle and became the spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous by the time the second game roller around. He was also Max's direct superior and was not an internal affairs officer and part time rapper. He worked in the same department as Max.
In the game, bullet time was supposed to simulate an exaggeration of how your body works on adrenaline i.e. the enemies moved slower while you moved at more or less normal speed. Bullet time was not a major slow-down that caused you to spend two minutes just pumping a shotgun, giving a guy enough time to squeeze three shots off at you.
At the end of the first game, Max shot Nicole Horne's chopper down. She died in the subsequent explosion - the game did not end with the murder of a fat sweaty guy in an overcoat.
Now these are all the things that were out of synch (that I can remember), but when the writers could get such basic things as the gender of Max's child right, I have to ask the question of whether or not anybody ever even played the game before putting posterior to paper to write the script.
Sheesh, now I know how you tossers felt after watching the Doom movie.
I say they should have let Fergle make his movie. I bet the folks at Fox feel like a gymnast that tries to show off with a fancy flip and lands awkwardly on his head. I feel like that ominous mother figure that stands over your bleeding body wagging a finger, after you impale yourself doing the same thing she ordered you not to do - You see, Fox? I told you you should have let Gibson have his film, now you're a few million dollars poorer, a few haters richer and your company review rating is as middle of the road as a confused deer on a night time highway.
Mr. Gibson, sir, I wish you all the best - show the internet what a real Max Payne movie is about.
A Mass Infection
Ugh... this bleeming virus. It's taking the whole country by storm, that's what it's doing. I mean, at first when I saw my mate at school all hunched over in the foetal position I just thought he was panzying out over the bad cafeteria pigeon he unknowingly consumed for lunch, but when he eventually uncurled and staggered out of school like an alcoholic in the desert sighting a Johnny Walker mirage I knew things were not as trivial as they seemed.
So anyway, the next day comes and falls right on my lap like a tarted out pole dancer, and I find myself in an air-conditioned class fighting off the sandman (ICT guys know who this is) and all his sleep devils as I try to untangle the knotted up slotch of indistinct words that crawl out his mouth in a volume that falls just under the human range of hearing. Yes, it's a task already, (trying to stay up and understand through this greuling two hour snooze fest) but throw in this new variable of unexplainable nasal cloggage and a higher than usual level of fatigue and you have yourself a recipe for stress that will clog the arteries of even the most avid of adrenaline junkies.
The first ten minutes of the class were well spent absorbing the material as all there was to do was plagiarize the note being scribbled on the whiteboard, but after that, the shit officially went pear-shaped. I could literally feel the mucus in my nose solidify exponentially with every turn of the internal AC fan. My head got heavy and my vision showed more motion trails than usual as my head bobbed on my neck in a helium balloon type fashion. The symptoms intensified until I was sprawled out on my desk like an exasperated rape victim. My classmates were concerned, caring and kind enough to take pictures of me in my derelict state to post on the expletive internet :S I dunno where the pics are right now, though. I suppose they'll surface sooner or later.
Anyway, with the sound of the last shutter click, I awoke to my lecturer (still babbling) and a subtle nuance of "when will it end?!!!" moaning. This room was no place for me to be, no sir! So I upped and stepped outside for some fresh air. The compound was as hot and desolate as ever with the commonplace decals and scenarios that make it a true UTT John D. campus - a few girls scampering here and there to avoid the ever horny testosterone-pumped beasts; a few guys sitting on a bench hoping to get a glimpse of a girl or two from the Fashion programme; one guy walking down the hall in some overly tight jeans with a look on his face that says "I'm metro, and not hetero". The sight just depressed me more and made me sink further down into the depths of un-wellness(?) so I decided to return to class.
As I cracked the door I saw the dingy light of misery peeking out from behind its hinges and as I opened it further, the boredom train slammed into me and relentlessly ran over my will to stay at school like a dog with it's paw stuck in the crack of the train-tracks. I didn't care at that point, my health and sanity seemed to be on their last leg - I had to leave school. Mark looked like he was about to pass out anyway...
Day 2
Congrats common cold, you finally have me where you want me - sweating and sprawled out on a bed like a Copa. employee. I feel terrible - nose clogged up; throat lined with mucus; hacking, hagging cough; sneezing fits - yeah, I got it bad. I didn't go to school today, yesterday or the day before but each day that came, passed me by as a man lost in a mountain of snat stained tissue paper. In my spare time though, I tired to narrow down the cause of my infection so that I might have a direction to point an infected finger at - Mikhail - no; mommy - highly likely; swimming in close proximity to that prostitute at Toco - that's the damn ticket! Yeah, I spent the day at Toco with my homie last Sunday and I got in social with this chick in the water. Further down into the chit-chat she said she was a whore... The cold that is now running rampant in my body had to have come from her, this might not even be the cold coming to think of it - might be a benign strand of AIDS that leaked out of her.... whatever (you know where I'm going with this).
At any rate, things weren't made any easier by the massive sunburn I got. At first it was the pain, now it's the look. Feeling the pain made me feel all manly and stuff, but looking at it makes me want to cry :( You see, it's reached the peeling stage and I've begun picking away at it. Unfortunately I did not wait until the whole things started flaking off so I could tear off big chunks of dead skin. No, I started picking away at myself like a tightly wrapped Christmas present and now I look like I was tried to the back of a chariot and dragged over a field the size of Russia... only the field is made up of broken glass and pitch. I look like I'm wearing the most skin-tight military camouflage uniform ever!!. At least my face looks ok. Then again, i'm thinking of systematically peeling the skin off so that i'll end up looking like This guy but:
Bollocks!
Anyway, back on topic.
I have the flu, not just me but a large portion of the youth population - it's an epidemic. From Diego Martin to St. Augustine and beyond, this flu is just screwing things up on an epic scale, and stomping a mud hole in everybody's fun plans. If you don't have it, don't get it. If you are F.L.U. negative, take steps to remain negative.
Proper sad, though - they can come up with a machine to clean the shit out your ass, but they can't come up with a cure for the common cold. Oh well, I guess they still need a viable means of getting people to use good old toilet paper :P
So anyway, the next day comes and falls right on my lap like a tarted out pole dancer, and I find myself in an air-conditioned class fighting off the sandman (ICT guys know who this is) and all his sleep devils as I try to untangle the knotted up slotch of indistinct words that crawl out his mouth in a volume that falls just under the human range of hearing. Yes, it's a task already, (trying to stay up and understand through this greuling two hour snooze fest) but throw in this new variable of unexplainable nasal cloggage and a higher than usual level of fatigue and you have yourself a recipe for stress that will clog the arteries of even the most avid of adrenaline junkies.
The first ten minutes of the class were well spent absorbing the material as all there was to do was plagiarize the note being scribbled on the whiteboard, but after that, the shit officially went pear-shaped. I could literally feel the mucus in my nose solidify exponentially with every turn of the internal AC fan. My head got heavy and my vision showed more motion trails than usual as my head bobbed on my neck in a helium balloon type fashion. The symptoms intensified until I was sprawled out on my desk like an exasperated rape victim. My classmates were concerned, caring and kind enough to take pictures of me in my derelict state to post on the expletive internet :S I dunno where the pics are right now, though. I suppose they'll surface sooner or later.
Anyway, with the sound of the last shutter click, I awoke to my lecturer (still babbling) and a subtle nuance of "when will it end?!!!" moaning. This room was no place for me to be, no sir! So I upped and stepped outside for some fresh air. The compound was as hot and desolate as ever with the commonplace decals and scenarios that make it a true UTT John D. campus - a few girls scampering here and there to avoid the ever horny testosterone-pumped beasts; a few guys sitting on a bench hoping to get a glimpse of a girl or two from the Fashion programme; one guy walking down the hall in some overly tight jeans with a look on his face that says "I'm metro, and not hetero". The sight just depressed me more and made me sink further down into the depths of un-wellness(?) so I decided to return to class.
As I cracked the door I saw the dingy light of misery peeking out from behind its hinges and as I opened it further, the boredom train slammed into me and relentlessly ran over my will to stay at school like a dog with it's paw stuck in the crack of the train-tracks. I didn't care at that point, my health and sanity seemed to be on their last leg - I had to leave school. Mark looked like he was about to pass out anyway...
Day 2
Congrats common cold, you finally have me where you want me - sweating and sprawled out on a bed like a Copa. employee. I feel terrible - nose clogged up; throat lined with mucus; hacking, hagging cough; sneezing fits - yeah, I got it bad. I didn't go to school today, yesterday or the day before but each day that came, passed me by as a man lost in a mountain of snat stained tissue paper. In my spare time though, I tired to narrow down the cause of my infection so that I might have a direction to point an infected finger at - Mikhail - no; mommy - highly likely; swimming in close proximity to that prostitute at Toco - that's the damn ticket! Yeah, I spent the day at Toco with my homie last Sunday and I got in social with this chick in the water. Further down into the chit-chat she said she was a whore... The cold that is now running rampant in my body had to have come from her, this might not even be the cold coming to think of it - might be a benign strand of AIDS that leaked out of her.... whatever (you know where I'm going with this).
At any rate, things weren't made any easier by the massive sunburn I got. At first it was the pain, now it's the look. Feeling the pain made me feel all manly and stuff, but looking at it makes me want to cry :( You see, it's reached the peeling stage and I've begun picking away at it. Unfortunately I did not wait until the whole things started flaking off so I could tear off big chunks of dead skin. No, I started picking away at myself like a tightly wrapped Christmas present and now I look like I was tried to the back of a chariot and dragged over a field the size of Russia... only the field is made up of broken glass and pitch. I look like I'm wearing the most skin-tight military camouflage uniform ever!!. At least my face looks ok. Then again, i'm thinking of systematically peeling the skin off so that i'll end up looking like This guy but:
- 1. My lighter complection isn't sky blue
- 2. With my luck, my skin won't peel in that manner
- 3. The ladies might not find that skin pattern attractive
Bollocks!
Anyway, back on topic.
I have the flu, not just me but a large portion of the youth population - it's an epidemic. From Diego Martin to St. Augustine and beyond, this flu is just screwing things up on an epic scale, and stomping a mud hole in everybody's fun plans. If you don't have it, don't get it. If you are F.L.U. negative, take steps to remain negative.
Proper sad, though - they can come up with a machine to clean the shit out your ass, but they can't come up with a cure for the common cold. Oh well, I guess they still need a viable means of getting people to use good old toilet paper :P
Some Follow-Up
Well i'm sure by now you all know very well about my public journal/diary over at www.diegodeviant.tk and how my daily hijinks bring a light of joy (intensity varies) to my multitude of readers... wait, you don't know about my journal? The screw off! What kind of a friend are you?! Ok i'm just kidding - the site, though well known isn't very well visited, at least by local readers anyway. All of my comments are usually in a language I can't understand, like Czeco...sla...van...i..an..ese or something. Anyway!
Now before your literary gland starts pumping the thick fluid of anticipation through every sacred orifice in your body, I regret to disappoint you by saying that this is not the follow-up to "The Hungry Pit". I'm sorry, but that is a dark and desolate chapter in my life that I no longer wish to revisit. It's gone and the offending individual mentioned in the piece is as dead to me as the road kill that lies oh so disturbingly before my neighbour's gate.
So this is going to be a progressive entry, one that answers the question of "what's next?" To get to that answer though, we'd have to deal with the obligatory pre-amble in the form of the question "What's going on now?".
So let's begin...
So what's new with me, you ask? Well for starters i'd say monotony is the order of the day -I wake up, look in the mirror, turn my head and gag, get ready for school, go to school, get back home, procrastinate then top the day off by falling asleep screaming into the night or counting the tiles on the ceiling while slipping slowly into the abyss of insanity. Yes, pretty monotonous indeed.
(Just kidding about the "topping my day off" part btw)
But aside from that though I can't complain at all, as a matter of fact i'd say i'm pretty darn blessed. I'm more spiritually centered than I have been in ages and life has found synchronicity with my brainwave pattern of "Tolerance for BS". Nothing bothers me much these days, or is it that I have become totally numb to the salt-laced gashes in my back that were manically and incessantly issued by the whip of life? Either way, I like this feeling of indestructible euphoria - Girlfriend wants to leave me? Go right ahead; Doggie just died? Was nice knowing you, Rover; Programme Leader barges in and tells me that I have to start over from my first year of Pre-University? Nothing like a clean slate! Walk in on your parents "doing the nasty"? Bleach in the eye makes the bad memories die :) It's like having a whip smart come-back line to every insult life spits at you from it's mouth, oozing with venom.
Hmmm...What else is on? Well, with the new direction my life has taken, i.e. following Christ, I have completely turned away from the party/clubbing scene. Now my nights are spent either chatting on the phone with a friend (female) or snuggled around the warm glow of my computer screen reading up on the latest news about the Google Android phone or simply enjoying a good movie with my mom. Sounds pretty damn sad, I know, but it beats pissing God off with a wild night of drinking, lewd bumping and grinding to degenerate music that (in some cases) ultimately leads to crazed debautched sex in a borrowed car, bedroom or bamboo patch. If you ask me I'd rather not wake up on a Thursday morning to witness Jesus maniacally tearing my name out of the book of life just because Zen was free with I.D. the previous night.
Needless to say with my turn away from the "hip" scene I have lost contact with the majority of my friends, but I still keep in touch with a select few who have inspired and/or encouraged me to keep along the straight and narrow. These are the ones you'll most likely find me hanging out with - a tight little unit whose existence spans a little over a half a decade, with bonds cast from the steel of Atlas' binding chains. The closest thing to brothers I've ever had at least.
Then there's the other set, by which I mean my "new" school friends. In this set I find a bottomless well of inspiration, joy and security. The colourful nature of the characters of this group makes rainbows sweat beads of jealousy. These are the people who must be described by the adjectives known only to the heavens. To think that so many people of such contrasting personalities can get along and unify so well is a modern marvel in itself, a spectacle that will forever disappear when we, the elements that comprise it, have passed and gone.
Afterthought: Was that last paragraph describing a group of guys? How gay!!
Moving on...
I've got a movie coming out - super awesome! Getting plenty of fan support but things on the back-end are a little bit serrated. The film's still coming out but, we just have to get some newly-formed issues ironed out first (More on that in another post).
School's just restarted, an event to which I respond with a resounding "ugh.." The vacation was so damn boring that I wished for school to re-open so that I could hang out with my friends, but I wish that hanging out with friends could have been the be-all and end-all of school. All this "work" business really puts a spoke the size of the Blade of Olympus in my wheel. I'd be much happier off getting my BSc in Piss Taking if you ask me - this kind of strain on the old brain later has you being regarded as a wired up kook whose grasp on sanity is looser than an old lady's undergarment. What good is a fancy degree if you're going to end up all cooped up in a looney bin two months after receiving it because your employer found you bashing your face on the keyboard at work singing Old Man River? Bollocks if you ask me!
So anyway what's this long gargle about? I have no idea. It's a rant, it's a rave, it's a piece of literature that'll jump smack the world off it's axis. No, it's none of those things - It's me doing something I like for a change, just letting the thoughts that hang precariously at the front of my brain trickle down my arm, onto the keyboard and onto the internet for your viewing (dis)pleasure.
Now before your literary gland starts pumping the thick fluid of anticipation through every sacred orifice in your body, I regret to disappoint you by saying that this is not the follow-up to "The Hungry Pit". I'm sorry, but that is a dark and desolate chapter in my life that I no longer wish to revisit. It's gone and the offending individual mentioned in the piece is as dead to me as the road kill that lies oh so disturbingly before my neighbour's gate.
So this is going to be a progressive entry, one that answers the question of "what's next?" To get to that answer though, we'd have to deal with the obligatory pre-amble in the form of the question "What's going on now?".
So let's begin...
So what's new with me, you ask? Well for starters i'd say monotony is the order of the day -I wake up, look in the mirror, turn my head and gag, get ready for school, go to school, get back home, procrastinate then top the day off by falling asleep screaming into the night or counting the tiles on the ceiling while slipping slowly into the abyss of insanity. Yes, pretty monotonous indeed.
(Just kidding about the "topping my day off" part btw)
But aside from that though I can't complain at all, as a matter of fact i'd say i'm pretty darn blessed. I'm more spiritually centered than I have been in ages and life has found synchronicity with my brainwave pattern of "Tolerance for BS". Nothing bothers me much these days, or is it that I have become totally numb to the salt-laced gashes in my back that were manically and incessantly issued by the whip of life? Either way, I like this feeling of indestructible euphoria - Girlfriend wants to leave me? Go right ahead; Doggie just died? Was nice knowing you, Rover; Programme Leader barges in and tells me that I have to start over from my first year of Pre-University? Nothing like a clean slate! Walk in on your parents "doing the nasty"? Bleach in the eye makes the bad memories die :) It's like having a whip smart come-back line to every insult life spits at you from it's mouth, oozing with venom.
Hmmm...What else is on? Well, with the new direction my life has taken, i.e. following Christ, I have completely turned away from the party/clubbing scene. Now my nights are spent either chatting on the phone with a friend (female) or snuggled around the warm glow of my computer screen reading up on the latest news about the Google Android phone or simply enjoying a good movie with my mom. Sounds pretty damn sad, I know, but it beats pissing God off with a wild night of drinking, lewd bumping and grinding to degenerate music that (in some cases) ultimately leads to crazed debautched sex in a borrowed car, bedroom or bamboo patch. If you ask me I'd rather not wake up on a Thursday morning to witness Jesus maniacally tearing my name out of the book of life just because Zen was free with I.D. the previous night.
Needless to say with my turn away from the "hip" scene I have lost contact with the majority of my friends, but I still keep in touch with a select few who have inspired and/or encouraged me to keep along the straight and narrow. These are the ones you'll most likely find me hanging out with - a tight little unit whose existence spans a little over a half a decade, with bonds cast from the steel of Atlas' binding chains. The closest thing to brothers I've ever had at least.
Then there's the other set, by which I mean my "new" school friends. In this set I find a bottomless well of inspiration, joy and security. The colourful nature of the characters of this group makes rainbows sweat beads of jealousy. These are the people who must be described by the adjectives known only to the heavens. To think that so many people of such contrasting personalities can get along and unify so well is a modern marvel in itself, a spectacle that will forever disappear when we, the elements that comprise it, have passed and gone.
Afterthought: Was that last paragraph describing a group of guys? How gay!!
Moving on...
I've got a movie coming out - super awesome! Getting plenty of fan support but things on the back-end are a little bit serrated. The film's still coming out but, we just have to get some newly-formed issues ironed out first (More on that in another post).
School's just restarted, an event to which I respond with a resounding "ugh.." The vacation was so damn boring that I wished for school to re-open so that I could hang out with my friends, but I wish that hanging out with friends could have been the be-all and end-all of school. All this "work" business really puts a spoke the size of the Blade of Olympus in my wheel. I'd be much happier off getting my BSc in Piss Taking if you ask me - this kind of strain on the old brain later has you being regarded as a wired up kook whose grasp on sanity is looser than an old lady's undergarment. What good is a fancy degree if you're going to end up all cooped up in a looney bin two months after receiving it because your employer found you bashing your face on the keyboard at work singing Old Man River? Bollocks if you ask me!
So anyway what's this long gargle about? I have no idea. It's a rant, it's a rave, it's a piece of literature that'll jump smack the world off it's axis. No, it's none of those things - It's me doing something I like for a change, just letting the thoughts that hang precariously at the front of my brain trickle down my arm, onto the keyboard and onto the internet for your viewing (dis)pleasure.
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