A New Hope

Although I vowed long ago to quit talking about things too personal, I felt compelled to announce the world that I have quit work to become a full-time songwriter.

Psych!

Yeah, I'm a wuss. I need financial security. I need something to keep me alive (read: keep myself from returning to my parents' house) and pay the rent. Something that will show up in my bank account every 2 weeks.

Yes, I have quit my current job for a new, better paying one. Not that my current one isn't paying me good enough already, but, you know, I just don't like it there. I feel like it's been sucking my brain for the past year. It's that bad. I can't believe I stayed there for a year.

So, when the opportunity presented itself, I naturally grabbed it -- for 30% more money! Who would pass up more money? Let me rephrase that. Who would pass up an opportunity to leave a miserable life at work? For more money?

I sound like I love money. I don't, but I don't hate it either. I need it for stuff (tickets to Singapore!) and some other stuff (an electric guitar!) and even more stuff (more hoodies!).

Anyway, I would gladly treat anyone for ice cream when I get my first paycheck. Just leave a comment here or something.

Can't Sleep, Fantasizing.

I've been trying to blog about my unholy career lately, but nobody cares about call centers and my career in it. Even I don't care, so who the heck wants to know, right?

The career I want is rockstar musician. I've been obsessing about this since I was in high school but my horrible work ethic has been public enemy no. 1 for my aspirations. However, after a weird experience with life (read: quarter-life crisis), I find myself having the needed push to start my own band, write more songs and actually record them for a demo. I might even go as far as begging people to let my band play in their productions or birthday parties.

Anyway, this morning, one of my favorite bands at the moment, Empire! Empire! (I was a Lonely Estate) had been recruiting for a new bass player. Apparently, their drummer, Jon, has been messaging people from their facebook fanpage, looking for a new bass player. I (naturally) replied back saying I'm in the Philippines but would really (I mean, REALLY) love to audition and wished them luck on the search.

I've never wished I lived in the states before, but after that, you won't believe how much this fantasy played in my head. In fact, I'm supposed to be sleeping right now. Instead, I'm blogging and even summed to gusto to actually write something with coherence.

P.S. There's a girl who's been meandering my thoughts and I just can't get off my head right now. She's cute, funny, extremely smart, writes the most amazing short fictions (now, I don't really read that much, but I can tell they're great), and did I mention she's cute? Too bad she's in the states right now (well what do you know, my urge to live there just got tripled) and will probably stay there for another year. Just my luck. I can tell I really (I mean, REALLY) like a girl when she somehow influence my music reference. Let's just say I got introduced to some new music that I liked. Anyway, I hope I don't blow anything. Act right on things. Ultimately, not piss her off.

Attention Span

How can a person increase his attention span? (it took me 5 minutes to write another sentence after that one). In the years that I've known myself, I rarely read books or even comic books. Things seem to get boring for me so I move to another thing. Do I need to be really interested to do something that requires a lot of attention? Or am I just lazy? Cause I like watching movies -- that I like. It really just seems I'm doing what I like and enjoy doing.

Recently, I tried listening to FS Fritzgerald's The Great Gatsby for my friends' Tumblr book club. After the first chapter, I can't seem to grasp anything anymore. It really sucks. I mean, what happened, not the book. The book seems nice. The author has a great way of describing things (which is what I need to get out of this reading/listening to books business) which is kind of how most writers write (which is kind of how I'd like to write cause writing like a 12-year old really isn't the way to go no more; being 26 and all).

Bottom line: I don't like reading and I don't know why. I'd love to love to read, though.

Love or Loneliness

A couple of weeks ago, a song from Math and Physics Club's new record caught my eye. This band called out a lot of my issues with it's title alone: Love or Loneliness. Made me think up to this day if my romantic decisions were triggered by love or loneliness.

If you know me personally, you'll observe (if I hadn't told you yet) that I'm a bit of a loner. I just like doing some things alone. Watch movies and TV shows, go to gigs and shows, I even live by myself (my roommate and I have little in common). I like eating alone and taking a long walk afterwards while sporting my iPod, Karla. Really, everything that a loner's supposed to do.

But sometimes, one can't help but yearn for human friction, attention, and affection. So I go out with my friends at least once a week, acquire lunch buddies in the office, or maybe go on a date sometimes. However, I still can't help but feel really different, so I end up being alone again.

I think I've lost my train of thought there. What I'm trying to say is, I looked back on all my failed relationships and think about why I even started them. Was it love or was it loneliness?

Anyway, if I ever happen upon real love. I wish to read this poem (taken from one of the Harold and Kumar movies) to her:

The Square Root of Three

by David Feindberg

I’m sure that I will always be

A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,

Why must my three keep out of sight

Beneath the vicious square root sign,

I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,

with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321

Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,

Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,

Together now we multiply

To form a number we prefer,

Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds

With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued

Your love for me has been renewed

Bored to Death

While effectively dying of boredom in the office, I started to read The IT Crowd episodes I had seen earlier. One of them was "Moss and the German" where Moss enrolls for a German cookery class only to find out that it was actually an ad for a German cannibal seeking for a willing victim (a parody of the Armin Meiwes incident).

Wait, what?

A parody? Of a german cannibal cook who invited willing-to-be-killed-and-devoured-guests-over-the-internet?

The curious person screamed "YOU HAVE GOT TO READ UP ON THAT" and clicked the Armin Meiwes link before finishing the original article I was reading. So there I was, learning about this German who achieved notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the internet. But this is not what this entry is about.

After skimming throughout the page, in the "See also" section of the article says "Internet homicide". I remember asking myself, "there's more?"

The internet: never ceases to surprise you. I feel like it's a giant jigsaw puzzle and I've only been piecing the corner.

Anyway, after clicking on Internet homicide and learning about various internet related crimes, right down at the "See also" section, I see "Internet suicide". By this time, one would expect to be prepared for anything. But I end up asking typical ol' me, "there's more?"

So yeah, internet suicides, most of them happening in Japan (not surprised at all), or cybersuicides is where individuals meet on the internet and eventually agreeing to end their own lives. Pretty simple and straight forward.

I skim through the whole thing, and as you'd expect, right at the See also section are two links: Internet homicide, and Online predator. These don't appeal to me anymore since I just read Internet homicide and I thought that Online predators are just a bunch of pedos trying to lure teens to go to one place and rape them.

What caught my eye was this once incident where a person was sentenced to death by hanging because he allegedly murdered three participants in their suicide pact. What amuses me, is that it could've been really his plan for his own suicide afterall. I mean, if he really wanted to murder people and kill himself, why not let the world know, right? So he killed those three idiots (really, someone beat you to killing yourself?) and got himself executed. It will all make sense in 5 minutes.

I clicked on "death by hanging" which had a wikipedia page of its own. Two pages, actually. The other is a 1968 film by Nagisa Oshima (now, I gotta see that).

So there I was, learning about one of the most famous lethal executions (around this time, I was reminiscing the time when I saw Saddam's execution. It was camera phone footage and it made me feel cool that I was seeing that. I even posted it, privately, in one of my multiply accounts. But that's not what this is about.

I happen to the right of the page and see "Part of a series on CAPITAL PUNISHMENT". Oh my word. It was getting darker and darker by the minute.

Never in my life did I think that I would know that Saddam had 12 Milky Ways before his death. One con had seconds of his special meal. One had a bucket of KFC Originals. One guy's special meal was "Justice, Equality, World Peace." you had a hint that that guy was a lunatic. One planned to eat so much that he wouldn't fit the electric chair. Genius? Nope, didn't work. One requested for a large vegetarian pizza to be given to a homeless person ni Nashville, Tennesse but was denied by the prison. However, it was carried out by others across the US. Imagine you are sitting on a stool hours before your death, and all you can think of was the hobos of Nashville. But this is not what this is about.

This is about one of the cruelest capital punishments I've ever read about. All my life, I thought that it was just death by hanging, lethal injection, electric chair, fire squad, and beheading. There were other capital punishments, but one really stood out in my imagination -- death by boiling.

Death by boiling is a method of execution in which a person is immersed in a boilingliquid such as water or oil.

Imagine yourself getting some hot water from the dispenser to make coffee. Then you accidentally splash some hot water on your hands. If that hasn't happened to you because you're too careful, well, you know why you're being too careful.

Imagine yourself under a shower and you accidentally switched the hot water too hot. Remember that feeling?

Now, imagine a person, who is alive, sitting on a giant pot or a reservoir of some sort. The water, or oil, starts getting warmer. Heating up minute after minute until you see little bubbles emerging from the bottom of the pot. The small bubbles turn into big ones bursting once reaching the surface. By this time, if you're the person sitting there, you're probably already screaming in pain, like a million pins are pricking your skin, or as if you were rolling in the Sahara or something.

I won't continue anymore cause I'm running out of things that would compare to being boiled in hot oil. But you get the point, right? This must be the cruelest of all punishments -- ever. And I've read about Disembowelment and Stoning. Whoever the recepients of such probably did something really wrong, like piss off a king or the pope or something.

Whatever they did, I still think it's too much.