NaNoWriMo

In accordance with piece-of-advice #3 from the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) intiation email, I am notifying the world that I will be writing a novel during the course of November. I will start on the 1st, stop on midnight of the 30th, and somewhere during the course of the 30 days, I will write 50,000 words of something that will be at least pure garbage. Piece-of-advice #3 says that if I flake out at any time, you have permission to deem me pathetic and to express that opinion freely. Yes, yes, I know, with this blog's three-billion+ readers I will be reading praise-brimming comments till November 2030, but what the hell, I'll take that chance. Other people who have put November to NaNoWriMo's sacrificial altar include Natasha...yea, Natasha. However, if someone decides that they could use a thirty-day-long kick in the balls, I would be glad to oblige. ...And also they should sign up for NaNoWriMo.

Tomorrow is Halloween, and the Mendiolas + extended family are having a party. I have been invited as the token "friend," which says a lot about the Mendiola's and their standards for friends. Then again, look at Mario, and you'll wonder about their standards for family. Anyway, Ben, Daniel, Mario and I have been ordered to dress up as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Daniel and Ben are in charge of supplies, Mario and I are to put the costumes together. I have more faith in my novel-writing abilities than in my costume-building skills so disappointment is inevitable. At least we won't be disappointed with that.

On a low note, food is running low. I finished off three boxes of grape nuts today, each having only those crumbs at the bottom that are always left until all the boxes full of full-fledged grape nut chunks have been devoured. The fridge is nearly empty, in accordance with moneysaving rule #2: "never shop until you've eaten everything in the refrigerator and licked the racks clean (Note: do not lick the inside of the freezer, or you might find out why you shouldn't have done it)." There's an egg or so, but those will be today's dinner, along with the remnants of the Angel Food. Yes, believe it or not, there's still Angel Food left over, though my previous comments on its quality render this fact unsurprising. Mostly we've been prefering oatmeal in large quantities, and so far nothing has proven to be as filling/$ as the tubs we buy biweekly. Once the oatmeal and the Angel Food are gone though (later today), we'll have to resort to ancient wisdom to keep our bellies full. I'm having trouble deciding between D'Artagnan's: "He who sleeps, eats," and the Russian: "A ton of water replaces a kilogram of bread."

The Wonderful World of Mucus

If you don't want to read about mucus coming out of various orifices of my body, stop reading now.

Over the last few days, my sickness has summoned vast amounts of mucus to aid in its quest to torture me. The current trend is a steady migration upwards through my body. If this journey continues in similar fashion, the story of my malady may get a whole lot more interesting.

Two days ago, my throat was my only enemy, and I frequently cleared it, spewing yellowish globs wherever I happened to have been aiming. Yesterday, my nose joined in on the game, and I found myself with two more nozzles to spray out of, and as trigger-happy as a Clint Eastwood movie. Today, the mucus has completed a leg of the journey and resides almost solely in my nose. Unfortunately, due to my severe case of JAD (Jammed Attention Disorder - the inability to switch attention quickly), I often find myself stripping off headphones and guitars and catching drips Mission Impossible style, i.e. nanoseconds before they hit the floor. But this is irrelevant. What's bothering me is where this mucus is heading next. "Ear-nose-throat" I hear are connected, so I may soon be blowing my ears (I've been practicing all day). And after my ears have succumbed, what next? In the worst case, I'll be blind for a while, but in the best, I may have a imminent cure for my dandruff problem.

Angel Food Update

Part of the Angel Food is 10 prepackaged frozen meals (The Senior Citizen Special). The meals are in plastic boxes, and have three compartments - main course, greens, and a mystery compartment which has so far included garlic bread, applesauce and boiled carrots. The quality of these meals, so far, has a very high variance.

The first tested the limits of edibility. It was advertised as "Chicken in Barbecue Sauce, Greens, and Applesauce." After consuming a large part of it, I was convinced that it was in fact "Barbeque Sauce with a Splash of Chicken, Something Green That Normally Isn't, and an Applesauce/Previous Mystery Green Stuff Infusion."

Five days later, when my hunger overpowered my discouragement, I selected another prepackaged meal at random. The label read "Parmesan Chicken, Greens and Garlic Bread." Once again, I was surprised, but this time, pleasantly. The chicken was tender, the pasta tasted like pasta, and the garlic bread...well it was pretty much a glorified cracker that didn't even smell like garlic. But on the whole, my low expectations combined with the meal's adequacy produced pure delight. The greens were still inedible, but looked vaguely bean-ish. That was yesterday.

Today, the third meal was opened, this time by Mario. It was "Roast Beef, The Inevitable Greens, and Boiled Carrots." He started off with the main course, replying "eh" when I asked him if it was good. He was almost done when I suggested he try the greens so that he would have something edible to wash it down with in case they proved again to be unpalatable. He grabbed a good forkfull of greens and bravely shoved it in his mouth. His face immediately turned upside down. The greens were apparently the only part of the meals that guaranteed consistency. After the initial surge of facial turmoil, Mario put on a very serious face and sat motionless. I ventured a guess: "are you trying to swallow?" He nodded dumbly, and continued to sit there. I could feel his gag reflex throwing a fit all the way across the table. To help him, I started laughing at him as hard as I could. It was a battle of pride against the body's instincts, and was almost up to Stephen Chow physical comedy standards. Finally he gave up and spit it back out into the greens compartment. Poor guy, he should have swallowed. Now I'll have to remind him of this failure every day of his life.

Wo jianzai

Celebrated a few birthdays with some drinking at our place the other day. There must of been something extra special in the drinks because Mario was experiencing weird effects. We had the following two conversations at the peak of inebriation:

Mario (chewing a piece of gum): dude, my senses are so powerful, I can taste that piece of chicken you're eating from all the way over here.
Me (demolishing a piece of fried chicken): what does it taste like?
Mario (gets a bearing on his long-distance taste buds): ...gum.

(a little later)

Mario (still chewing gum): dude, my brain...I don't think anyone can understand what's going on in my brain right now. It's amazing.
Me: psh, I bet I can. Summarize it in two words.
Mario: Gum... ... ... ...good.

Nevermind, that sounds pretty much like the effects of alcohol.

I've been watching some Chinese movies lately, namely The Chinese Odyssey Part I & II. It's pretty glorius slapstick. There's lots of crotch humor, which is apparently as funny in China as it is in the United States. It must be some kind of genetically grounded reflex, like a mental kneejerk - when a man's crotch gets kicked, punched, set on fire, hit with a combination of gravity and tree branch, etc., you MUST laugh. And since I must, I did. A lot. Of course there can only be so much vicariously experienced pain before habituation sets in, but the movies threw in a good measure of other guaranteed laugh-elicitors - unibrows, horrible special effects, cross-dressing, and funny phrases like "Boyo Bolomi!"

I downloaded some more singing-training material. According to the latest, in five weeks I will no longer sound like a creaking door being slaughtered, or if I do, it will be as much as an octave higher than currently.

I've also been learning lots of Chinese lately by chatting with Chinese girls on various continents. Hmm, thought I had more to say about this...

Last Words

Mario goes to work at around 2, and Franco and Daniel are at college, so I get myself to myself for a large part of the day. There are lots of advantages to alone time. You can sing really loudly, set new standards for minimal clothing, play music and movies at top volume, boobytrap the place for when the roommates get home, cry for hours about how life is misery mounted on misery and how nobody ever does what I frickin' tell them to, etc. It's a variety pack, and I'm taking full advantage.

Friday Franco's holding a party at our place - I was told there will be alcohol, Kool-Aid, chicken, and watermelon, because the birthday girl is black. What better birthday present than a racist joke, eh?

Dava's (the Living Incarnation) techies finally responded to my dad's emails. Actually they responded on August 28th, but Yahoo Mail shooed the Divine Email right into the spam folder. Needless to say Yahoo Mail is going straight to hell. Anyway, this means my parents are now going to be devoting lots of their time to the Way of Freedom as Dava calls it. On one hand this could be a problem, because I'm kind of counting on them to make some money so that I don't have to. On the other hand, maybe my inheritance just got one hell of a lot bigger. Having Gods as parents could open some doors...or get me tortured and crucified, can't remember which. Hmm...I guess I'll have to do some risk assessment.

It's kind of strange to be sitting here, calmly writing hilarity, while Hurricane Ike is flying straight at me with what I doubt are the best intentions. As of now I have about 48 hours before Ike's elemental fury unleashes itself on the half-evacuated city of Houston. If this were a movie I would be spinning sentimental confession pieces over the phone to my friends and family, doubting my sexual preferences, and generally being a pathetic wreck. Fortunately I'm really hungry and all I can think of is that tuna that's sitting in the fridge. Mmm...tuna...

Blog Entry 468

We moved into our apartment a week or so ago...technically. Daniel and Franco signed the lease and danced right in, while Mario and I stalled for a couple days, maximizing our abuse of his aunt and uncle's hospitality. For three or four days we'd make weak attempts to move, but the reasons to stay were numerous and just a fridge door away. We pretty much had no choice.

Yesterday I successfully made an ass out of myself trying to set up wireless Internet. I walked to Target (more than a mile away!) and bought one of those Cable/DSL routers. When I got home I threw four years of irrelevant MIT knowledge at the thing to try to get it to show me my mail. I eventually gave up and summoned the help of a real king among nerds - Gene, who by some freak coincidence happens to be my dad. Five minutes of teamwork later we deduced that the router wasn't actually a wireless router at all - it was just a bunch of Ethernet jacks held together by a "Cable/DSL Router" sticker. It was back to the store for me. Who would have thought that in 2008, when even plants are online (the sub-bark temperature of the 56-year old oak outside my window is a pleasant 76 degrees), non-wireless routers are still polluting the shelves of our stores.

We decided to try out Angel Food Ministries - this company that sells you packages of food at relatively cheap prices. The company cooperates with churches in different areas to handle the dissemination of Angel Food packages - yet another activity of the Christian franchise. Our church bears the innuendo-soaked moniker - "Love in Action Church." I'm expecting at least nuns in playboy bunny costumes. At best, I'll soon be a newly converted Christian. Anyway, starting on the 27th, I should be comfortably eating on $50 a month. I will update as to the success of this experiment immediately upon survival.

I've been having weird and unusually violent dreams lately. Not yet sure what they mean. The other day I dreamed about some psycho killer who I couldn't convince in time not to shoot Chun right in the throat. This is an obvious hint for me to work on my debating skills. The next part is harder to qualify. Chun made a miraculous recovery and the guy went on trial. However, to make sure his sentence was fair, he was a member of the jury presiding over his own case. In the dream, this frustrated me to no end, because he was obviously just going to walk. Anyway, I finally got him back by waking up. Now he's worse than dead - he's back to "never even existed."

We're Back

Haven't written in a while, so you'll have to pardon the spelling and grammar errors. I've mostly been sitting on the couch at the Mendiola house (as evidenced by the permanent butt-print), eating free food, and moving my wrist back and forth in that not-what-you're-thinking way.

Making progress with ear training, I can now hit about 80% consistently for all melodic intervals up to an octave. I've also started practicing hearing chord quality, though the results are hardly bragging-worthy.

I've gone to church twice here now. I think it's time to stop now, before it becomes a trend or worse, a habit. The pastor has kept me on my toes thus far, alternating ideas that verge on the sensical and ones that border on Nazi. For instance, he spent twenty minutes advocating above all else a personal relationship with God, a view I intellectually admire without having a shred of my own personal relationship. Then, just when I was about to bring out the applause, he started ranting about how there are only two types of people in this "fallen world," offspring of the seed - those who believe Jesus Christ is "the tits" (The One and Only Way to God), and offspring of the serpent - everyone else. Having found myself singled out as a son of a serpent among rows of flattered Christians, and offended for my family that only has one Zodiac-appointed snake among the lot of them, I respectfully gave the pastor death stares for the remainder of the pandering.

I've also been having frequent religious discussions with Mrs. Mendiola, with sporadic attendance by Mario. Usually this involves me inventing scenarios that involve her committing to some statement, and then try to trap her into a maze of deductions that end with her being the Antichrist. So far, she's done a remarkable job of remaining calm and unshaken, and most frustratingly, not yielding an inch. Not even calling her a fanatic, a terrorist, and pure evil convinced her otherwise. However, in my defense, it's much easier to defend against contradictions when your viewpoint of the world is "it's God's plan." Contradictions are then just the spice of his creative license.