The Art of Getting By -- not a review, but a review

I hated it when Murakami penned the summation of my existence thru his overcoat wearing, train riding, smoking character (at least that's how I imagined him) in one of his stories from The Elephant Vanishes. Something about fear and not knowing and hurting people during the process. I think this existentialist shit is getting old (after someone made it look like hipster emo).

I hated The Art of Getting By, too. Because the same overcoat wearing, train riding, smoking character was there, only this time he draws cute monsters for party invites and wears a t-shirt for graduation.

Maybe there's something about hate that I need to wind my mind around. I also like the word draw.

Mistakes, undead, and hormonal overrule

I was told that my age is the best time to collect mistakes. Coincidentally, I have picked up the message from a graduation scene in the famous "saga" of the glorified undead and the estrogen overdosed mortal that worships their existence.

After a few days of being affiliated with "outsourcing" people ("human traffickers," if you'd ask my new friend Dana -- dear Lord, bless the Jesuits for creating such a nice young lady), a morning spent sending out applications to the Katipunan area (four applications in less than twenty minutes, mind you -- again, glory be to the Jesuit heavens for sending me people who can be patient and nice under the melanoma-inducing Manila noontime sun), an afternoon of allowing hope to seep into my pathetic excuse for existence (it would be really nice to have employment at NFRDI as a Christmas gift), and an evening of talking about glow-in-the-dark toys, of intellectual masturbation, and of arguing about the hotness level of vampires and werewolves...

I realized that Amy Farrah Fowler of The Big Bang Theory and Tina of Bob's Burgers are made of the same stuff.

War With The Estrogen-Overruled Subconscious I: Amy and the Asperger's guy

War With The Estrogen-Overruled Subconscious II: Tina and the erotic undead

Unapologetic bluntness, attraction to the humanities, and more procrastination

David Sedaris and Jessica Zafra are my kind of authors, probably because we share the same amount of rage and of disbelief in the possibility of goodness by the human race, and because these are people who profess their thoughts with the sheer beauty of simply having the naked truth in mind (scandalous or attractive, then). I was up rereading Me Talk Pretty One Day until around two am, after a double dose of Jesse Eisenberg on HBO and a failed attempt at writing a piece about greatness. I came to a semi-stoned state after seeing The Social Network to the point of almost worshipping Mark Zuckerberg's unapologetic bluntness - Sedaris and Zafra welcome the guy to the club with open arms.

Don't. Move. The Pile.

500 Days of Summer's OST is still playing in my head, and along with it is an urge to read philosophical texts and some books from my pile (which I had to temporarily kick out of my bedside to make way for... text books. Gah.). Speaking of books, I believe my behavior towards arranging my piles is bordering towards the obsessive-compulsive; this morning my mother tried to put the pile that I kicked out of bedside to the shelf space voided by the textbooks now acting as my pillows, and I got so irritated I almost snapped at her. She said sorry and stopped midway, and I undid her arranging the minute she went downstairs. This was followed by an attempt to melt my rage by listening to Le Festin, washing my hands dirtied by dust, clipping my nails, and washing my face. Perhaps I'm not a morning person. Either that, or my hormones are back.

I have been meaning to devour philosophy (specifically, theories on existentialism as they are adjacent to the concoctions of my brain on most days), and my enthusiasm got reignited when I discovered last night that Friedrich Nietzsche is German. Of course he is. The land of the profound and un-celebrated-slash-misdirected deep thought.

The fact that almost everybody hates this guy makes him all the more interesting.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to (a very futile attempt at) studying polymerization of ribonucleotides by RNA polymerase during transcription.

yeah, right.

My Weekend in Movies

A few days ago, this is how my aura radiates, as publicized by my social networking status update:

Still nothing. Optimism sure can't buy you change sometimes, especially when the costs are too high.

I knew I needed a change of pace; on most days my head argues that it needs a complete intellectual and psychological overhaul, something that my incapacitated and highly sentimental hypothalamus taught could be cured by a dose of inspirational movies. Hence the spotlight on A Beautiful Mind, Dead Poets Society, and American Beauty.

During some of the rainy summer days I spent in Baguio City, my fraternity brothers, sorority sisters, and I would laze around most of the afternoons. Nicotine, alcohol, and a bunch of movies from the sidewalks of Session Road are staples, and American Beauty happens to be one of the bunch. To this day, I still swear that it is the most kick-ass movie I have ever seen. Well, next to the Saw series.

After watching this movie, I felt as if I owe it a standing ovation for its realness. Its theme is a type of bluntness you don't see in most creative works anymore. American Beauty is so great (it won five academy awards) I had to watch it again.

Well, I actually started Friday with Dead Poets Society. If anybody would quote me on this I would deny it, but this movie made me cry, like three times I guess.

I listed carpe diem as one of the phrases I might have tattooed on me sometime; the movie was not able to shake me to seize the day however, as I simply began to watch another movie after wiping my tears and snot with my shirt sleeve. It did make me want to stand on a table, though.

And what could be more perfect for my hypersensitive hypothalamus than this drama about living with something that haunts you:

When John Nash said, "they're still there; I just choose not to acknowledge them," I had to grip my chest and inhale deeply.

I still wasn't inspired after more than six hours of motion pictures; if anything, my overly dramatic hind brain became even more chaotic.

However, I have received a call from an anonymous number. I wouldn't have answered it as I hate answering phone calls from people I know, let alone strangers, but perhaps my then confused nervous system decided that it was okay.

Turns out, my "Still nothing" status update might just be wiped out this coming week. Let's see.

Chandler's "gah-uh-ah": my reaction exactly

Well, that's the best I could get out of the internet. Close enough.

I was in the middle of watching The Voice and Glee reruns this morning as both AXN and Star World decided to air marathons. I'm still partial to downloading Glee episodes; sometimes the show seems too bubbly for my taste, plus I hate social conventions and there's like a cult of Glee followers out there, so maybe not. But I'm slowly falling in love with Sue Sylvester much like how I root for the kontrabidas in Pinoy Telenovelas (I used to watch ABS-CBN dramas just so I could hear Cherie Pie Picache's evil laugh), so maybe the next time I get sentimental I might just download Glee.

Anyway, in the middle of all that lung power extravaganza, I switched channels and saw Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on Star Movies, a clear example of what one might expect from cable TV this dark and twisted month of October. I learned from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Frankenstein that I'm currently reading that there has been multiple movie adaptations of arguably one of the most well-known horror creatures ever made. Still, I think most people do not know about the monster's story, apart from the bit that he is made up of different dead body parts sewn together by a mad man.

I'm still on chapter seven of twenty four so in as much as I am thrilled to see Robert De Niro playing the role of what is possibly one of my favorite literary stars, "gah-uh-ah", I can't watch the movie adaptation just yet.

Then the cable went out so I ended up going on line against my will (I'd like to think that I have a life, especially on weekends, and that my existence is not merely subsisted by the internet despite the reality that proves otherwise). I have previously negotiated with my hypothalamus that I will not go on facebook to check on the latest updates of people I know from Baguio because it makes me extremely sad and mushy to the point that I am sometimes emotionally crushed to pitifulness by a single photograph. So when I innocently browsed pictures on an album of a friend, it's like the spirit of Sue Sylvester herself threw a large brick on my face. "Gah-uh-ah," I didn't want to see that, that was exactly what I was avoiding to see, despite the partial awareness that I might see just that, since well, uhm, the album has his face on it.

Oh, and "gah-uh-ah" to Steve Jobs' death too.

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist - is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era (source)

 A few days ago, my friend Kim and I were having a conversation regarding existentialism borne of our individual bouts with depression - mine because of life not turning out the way I've planned, and hers because of medical school. She mentioned something about Zeitgeist: The Movie during our discussion on religion; told me that I should be careful if I decide to watch the film because it's seriously persuasive.

I checked it out and apparently, it's multi-awarded. Peter Joseph, Zeitgeist's creator describes the film as "not [actually] a 'film', but a performance piece, which consisted of a vaudevillian style multi-media event using recorded music, live instruments and video...The work was never designed as a film or even a documentary in a traditional sense - it was designed as a creative, provoking, emotionally driven expression, full of artistic extremity and heavily stylized gestures." (source)

These past few months, I've been developing an interest in German Philosophy after Kenneth told me about Arthur Schopenhauer, an apprentice of Immanuel Kant. It's peculiar that a lot of profound words we have today are rooted upon German terms that actually don't have English equivalents; take angst for example. And yes, zeitgeist is one too.

Should you be interested in watching, here's a copy of Zeitgeist: The Movie online (I have yet to watch it; the dark and twisted air due to the typhoon days ago did not help my attempts):

Zeitgeist: The Movie - 2007 by Peter Joseph from ZeitgeistMovie.com on Vimeo.

Post Grad: yup, that's about it.

For the past few months, I've been having an existential crisis. Being a graduate of the country's premiere state university is crazy enough, but having a lifetime of ideals and dreams and promise of greatness is another story.

Well, life is pretty simple when you are eight. You go to school, thinking that by learning how to multiply irregular fractions, you would have power enough to get through life. That proper spelling and grammar would be the key to landing the perfect job that will feed your perfect family. That understanding the life cycle of a butterfly means happiness and contentment in your entire adult life.

Then you reach twenty. You are a recent college graduate, unemployed, and living under your parents' roof. Your sanity is under the mercy of your mother's constant nagging, your self-worth is daunted by your father's unspoken yet even deadlier expectations, and your self-respect is melting away with your younger sibling's opinion of what you do. You have planned the next five years of your life perfectly when you made the choice of what to major in, but suddenly, things are not going as you have expected. Suddenly, that college degree is no match to what you have before you - life.

Post Grad was dead on. You oversell yourself to compensate for your lack of job experience (suddenly innovative was visionary, active was driven, and outgoing was enthusiastic). You detest the fact that everyone was already moving on with their lives, doing something productive and admirable and definite, while you are left behind. Suddenly, you are not so unique and brilliant anymore, everybody else is, too.

Well, the movie was not of any help to my existential crisis, as (spoiler alert) its concept of a happy ending was to quit the job of your dreams to move to a new city with your boyfriend. I think the ending was a delusional hopefulness, something I could never employ in my life for I live in a country bearing disappointments such as an education system that is crumbling down by the hour, a job market that gags you with call center agent positions, and a government already too rotten to expect anything from, to name a few.

But then again, life throws in an occasional ray of sunshine in its constant field of storms. And that would be my next story.