5 Things About Everything That A Bisaya Learned From Stealing Tim Kreider's We Learn Nothing

This drawing is from Tim Kreider. I don't think I have permission to upload this. But I'm allowed to post his book cover in Amazon. Where can I read the answer to convince me that I should take this down?

1. We learn nothing.

2. We learn everything, but only a part of it. Okay that doesn't sound right. I don't think I agree with Kreider's thoughts on how we should just sever ties with people who are mentally sick or who drag us down and abuse our kindness to smut. But I don't think I have a good reason for my disagreement, other than denial.

3. We are like cats; we shun people who show their affection, we crawl towards them when it is deprived of us. Kreider had a line about our appreciation of life only when we're in the middle of a jungle and we're holding honey and a horde (or school? Bears like fish. Ergo, they ARE fish.) of bears lunge towards us.This is true, but I love bears, and if there's death, then I should just share it with them. I'm kidding, but not that part.

4. We Cebuanos should read his book because it mentions David Foster Wallace and James Salter, the two writers you should know more about because you're probably religious and you're probably so smart, you think Ferdinand Marcos is cool and that we should always ignore the street kids and we should always bullshit our friends with our brilliant lies.

5. We should believe in peak oil. That's right, bay. Mahurot ang oil gipanggamit for your Hummer and more genius cars. Tough shit, right? Now deal with it. If you're the genius kind, buy more iPhones and iPads and forget about other poor people's plight and enjoy life now, and who cares about the immorality of buying iPads professionally made by 8-year old kids when you know God is with you? God is with me God is with me God is with me. Me. Me. Me.

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Dead Cat, Kafka On The Shore and The White Ribbon

Even if I almost immediately stared away from it I knew the cat was dead because its innards were gushed out of its body in a dried so-burnt-it-was-white kind of way. I also knew I had to look away from it because I keep photos of cats with funny captions from Cheezburger Network on my phone. My phone has actually no cellular connection so other than its look it really has nothing to do with being the usual communication gadget most people who didn't get the chance to learn the conflict mineral issue in Congo, have. The Congo issue basically says your cellphone parts are most likely mined and produced by raped little girls.

The dead cat reminded me of Haruki Murakami's Kafka On The Shore. Although the dead cat I saw was in certain degrees supposed to be more haunting because not only is no one certain who is most likely to blame for the cat's death, people around the lying cat on the road can't also seem to be bothered to even get it away from the streets so it won't be ran over again. For the third time. Or even none, since who is to say the cat wasn't hammered to blotches by a group of Cebuano twelve-year-olds who took literally Michael Haneke's White Ribbon?

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Inside The Square

There was no one else sipping the shop's sipping hot chocolate specialty inside the square. Half to the brim was what I supposed to be the usual measure when you order a regular cup, which I don't consider fair considering its price. The mall is noisy, but not more than the usual volume one normally feels when it's some sort of holiday season you're too busy to be part in or if it's just regular mall Sundays. The view from where I'm sitting with my sipping hot chocolate's a general advantage. I could see here what might be deemed unseen in areas behind me. This could probably be a good time to learn what Ian Rankin meant by a Good Hanging.

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Rankin's Black

Unfinished with reading Ian Rankin's Black and Blue by my bed, I went outside and stared at the stretch of man-made light. The patio's a minor mess; pieces of dried fish, a laundry hanger, rods made of nylon lining the pillars of this structure I've spent at least a month in. There are no interests to travel; only books offer the cleanest form of passing days. Inside the books are left near the window and prone to tearing from the rain outside.

The neighbor's house is queer because its second story has a door to a place that passes for a terrace but minus the floor and the railings that make it real.

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Fixing The Door and The Usual Tiresome.

I finished taking a bath and went for the door to hang my towel. I tried opening it but it was locked. From outside. Such was the case because the set-up of the locking system outside could lock people in just from simply closing the door. There was no panic, the thought of shouting resurfaced, but not enough to actually commence doing. My room's on the third floor; across, there were no people, at least no one I know, only a two-story building whose second one isn't halfway done. The floor became its roof.

I fixed it by forcing it open. There was no panic, an almost cry and tired shriek came out, but no more than that. No more than the usual tiresome, of course.

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