the zeppelin of burning dreams

Here I am, rushing 20 short articles for an unnamed company.  The promise is money.  Another promise is Max Brenner for a taken woman.  No, I'm not moving in on her.  Not everything in my life revolves around pretty women. 

What was my point again?  Ah yeah.

I have a deadline.  Today.  As in by twelve midnight tonight.  And here I am, blogging.  Ain't it grand?  And of course my day won't be complete without having other insistent demands worming their way into my life in order to keep me from finishing the work I'm supposed to be doing for money.  Namely, a Mahasa rehearsal tonight at 8pm.

My productivity levels just sank to an all time low.  Oh yeah.  I just hope they don't mind the tardiness of my submission, because I swear I can see myself submitting the said articles in a day.

But hey.  Mahasa's worth the trip, really.  Working in a band made up of people you pretty much get along with is always fun, and rehearsals are riot acts, I swear.  Of course, there's always the bitch of a task of setting up schedules.  And since everybody in the band has something to work on during the day and come back home during the wee hours of the night, all settlements have to be made via SMS.  And really, that can be pretty expensive, especially on a guy who has to survive on a five hundred peso allowance per week.  Especially since my allowance is presently nonexistent because of the yearly phenomenon called summer.

Thus the job.  I really need the money.  God knows.  If my liver weren't shriveled to a worn-out chunk of meat thanks to my good friend Johnnie Walker, I'd sell my liver.  I'd sell blood if the fat content in my bloodstream weren't hitting high bloodpressure levels.  I'd sell semen if . . . well, I would sell semen once I screwed up enough guts to go to the sperm bank in Ermita.

Anyway.

I was at Kolumn Bar last Saturday.  I like the Tomas Morato - Timog Avenue area, since everything you see up and down the two streets are entertainment establishments.  Of course, I wouldn't be caught dead on some of the places there - I was at Xaymaca once, and although everyone else was having a good time listening to Brownman Revival, I was at the stairwell leading to the second floor and drinking my ears shut.  It was a gas.  I wouldn't go back to Xaymaca unless it were Indio-I playing.

There were two places near Kolumn Bar that I found rather interesting tho.  One was called Kebab Etc.  The price - serving ratio of the food was on the unfair side of things, but the beer -  Red Horse 500ml - cost twenty two pesos.  Extremely cheap Red Horse, that.  When we got to Kolumn for our set, we spent nearly forty two clams for a measly San Miguel Pale Pilsen.  So it goes (as Kurt Vonnegut would say).

The other establishment we didn't check out, but I wanted to anyway.  It was a dark, rather dingy place called Hot Babes bar and KTV.  I was itching to go in for, well, the obvious.  Plus, there was no cover charge.  I'm sure you won't be seeing any obvious spooning inside, but the lack of cover charge for lasviciously clad GROs is a rare oyster. 

I'm sure they would've found a way to charge me anyway, had I gone in.  Which was one other reson I didn't make my way inside:  I was broke as the Sputnik at the time.  I couldn't even afford another beer at Kolumn Bar.  

Thus I work.  See ya drips later.

Here's a funny little thing:

We've this housekeeper who's a little bit on the dull side.  Razor-sharp dull, as a matter of fact.  She locks herself out of the house on a regular basis, and once required my grandmother, nearly a year before she died, to open the door for her.  Considering her age back then, my lola was still pretty wiry, and it wasn't much of a bother for her to open the front door for people.  But still.

This same housekeeper also requires regular supervision on her daily duties, especially when it comes to cooking rice.  Her recipe, for some unknown reason, requires her to cook one side of the rice extra soft, and the other side al dente.  Which means the rice fights back.  Gives my dad a headache, and something to bellow about.  To the housekeeper's defense, my dad enjoys bellowing, but then again that same housekeeper gave my dad a major migraine once.  He was trying to teach her how to use a can opener.  Yes, she didn't know how to use a can opener.  Razor-sharp dull.

Let's call this the story of the deafs.

We recently hired (and promptly fired) this old woman to work alongside the razor-sharp dull housekeeper.  Now this old woman was deaf as a newt on Christmas eve, and required people to shout at her - really, shout at her; my dad had no problem, and bellowed to his heart's content - in order to get her to understand something.  And for no reason I can fathom, maybe due to her deafness, maybe due to a low IQ, she had to talk in the same decibel level of the person talking to her.  She shouted things, and considering that she had the voice of a classic old crone in the movies, this was one hell of an ordeal.

Of course, her shouting was a necessary evil; despite all of her shortcomings, this old lady was an amazing housekeeper.  She'd zoom through her chores, and for the short while she was with us, the second floor sala was immaculate.  The bathrooms were spic-and-span.  She used Downy for the tiles.  Don't ask me why.

The only problem with her was that she really and truly was on the verge of inane deafness.  Now enter the razor-sharp dull housekeeper, which my dad calls the elf, and for all intents and purposes shall be referred to as thus hereafter.  The elf wasn't exactly deaf; but she was subject to a very subjective attention span.  She heard what she wanted to hear, unless you bellowed her name in a volume that could be heard all the way to the second floor.   She also didn't work as hard as the old crone.  Whenever the two of them crossed each others' paths, you should expect one thing and one thing only; fireworks.  The elf hated the old lady vehemently, and the old lady couldn't seem to understand why the elf spoke to her in a very brusqe, hurried and unkind manner.  Thus she raised her own voice volume a notch. 

Result: bedlam.  It was hilarious to watch.  I personally rooted for the old crone, since she played a mean game of Solitaire.

We got rid of the old crone because despite the quality of the work she put out, she had this really creepy aura about her, as if she were an old, autistic women (nothing against the special kids here, but really).   

I found it hilarious that the one left standing happened to be the elf.  She was, on all accounts, the lesser of the two.  My dad retained her because, as he says, the woman had bloodhound blood in her.  She could find anything that was lost in the house.

I asked my dad what he'd do if we had a real bloodhound in the house.

"Get rid of the elf promptly," was his reply.

So I connect to the internet to begin working.  I'd just been given a new (possibly more exciting) assignment, and I was itching to get cracking at it.

Opening up my Gmail - this was around 5 in the afternoon, yeah my body clock's been distorted lately - was like a horror story.  I had to finish two rush articles that were due 6pm.  

I was like, holy sheet.

I call up Marc and tell him that I'd just received the email and ask if it were possible to extend the deadline.  Thankfully, he said sure.  He gave me up to 9pm.

Then good ole God decided to throw a shoe at me and see how I'd handle it.  First things first:  at around the time I was messaging, some really really REALLY nice worm from the net managed to, well, worm its way into my computer.  You should've seen Norton going nuts.  It was opening up to THIRTY FIVE fucking windows each time I went online.  My computer was sending out that many emails at once.  I was mind-boggled.

Fucking bug.  I searched for the root keyword to be removed from the registry on the net - yes, I was on the net using a Windows XP computer without a decent firewall, putangina - and deleted the damn thing.

I also turned off some of the other possible bugs that activated themselves in the startup process.  I have no FUCKING idea how they got there.  I blame my dad.

So there, all clear.  Norton wasn't going insane no more.  I began on one of the articles.  This was around 8pm.

And then, when I was nearly done with the first article, my internet connection went kaput.  ALL of my internet connections went kaput.

How insane is that?

Don't worry.  I'm done with the rush job.  I bought myself a new internet card.  I was seething at the 7-11 and probably scared of a few of the cute women buying donuts there.  I didn't care.  FOR ONCE I DIDN'T CARE ABOUT PRETTY WOMEN.  Gaddmudderpacker.

Back to my normal chores then.  Giddyap yo.