I Don't Do Trick or Treat

**Not enough Halloween fun to go around that we have to borrow some other country's crap?

None of the people I knew growing up had to do trick or treat. We were so decidedly quasi-ghetto that my Halloweens were trips to the cemetery where we would make balls out of candle wax drippings. I know its primitive, and it sure as hell hurt, but it kept us entertained until it hurt some more. Then we'd whine our grown ups to take us home. We'd whine with wonderful industry if we happened to be in the cemetery on a Saturday afternoon because we can't afford to miss Noli de Castro (our current National Vice President) hosting the all too creepy Magandang Gabi Bayan Halloween special.

Them 80's were a fucking good time to do Halloween. Halloween's mostly a laid back affair where we'd get high on mostly primitive shit that in no remote way resembled what other countries did on that same day. We're mostly cool with our wax balls and our scary TV shows. But we were largely original with our celebration, basic but original, and we kept to our own like what our parents did. Fast forward to twenty years later, and the whole celebration started getting different. Its not the transgendered kind of different, nor is it the receding hairline kind of different. It's more of the irrelevant kind of different because our kids are doing Trick or Treat now.

Now let me give you the reassuring claim that when I'm wrong, then I'm most definitely certainly wrong, and I think Filipino kids dressing up to do trick or treat is so wrong its borderline stupid. I admit I'm all in for the aesthetics. Cute is cute, no contest, but its the whole idea that bugs me. What kind of rice are we eating these days that gave us the idea its okay for our Filipino kids to go Trick or Treating? Are we becoming so Americanized that we have to dress up our kids for candies like what they're doing? Do we even know why we're doing it? Have we finally run out of third-world things to do on Halloween? Or for the rest of the year for that matter? Because if we are, then there's no reason why we should stop with Halloween. We might as well do Thanksgiving, and we'll do it not for any cultural significance or whathaveyou, most definitely not for the Indians, not for shit, but for the poultry. And why shouldn't we? We're already dressing our kids up like little brown devils to ask for candy, we might as well go overtime with all this cultural social climbing and do Thanksgiving. Halloween for the candy, Thanksgiving for the turkey. But we should learn how to stuff that Andok's chicken this early on.

All in all, this trick or treating business among our kids, our Filipino kids, has got to be a singularly conceited affair that makes no sense in this third world country. Truth is, we all probably grew up in the same dark ages where our Halloweens were identified with candle wax balls and ghost stories on TV. But I never grew this unnecessary inclination to dress up my nieces or nephews as ghosts, goblins, hookers, or firemen just for treats. I wouldn't know how to make sense of it all. Kids are terribly inquisitive little devils by default, and I know one of them will ask me WHY THE HELL am I wasting good money on cheap-ass costumes that make gay dipshits of them.

I really wouldn't know what to say to that. I'll just teach them how to make the baddest candle wax ball instead.

Picture from Chromasia.com

The Things You Realize Once the Caffeine Wears Thin

**I know this won't reach you because you don't know I blog. So I blogged my apology.

I admit, I was this giddy fool with a charged motormouth that was running more on caffeine than on forethought and common sense. I talked a lot, spared nothing, and your love life became a laughing stock in consequence. I might have crossed some boundaries; mighty apologetic if I did.

Lord knows how I could've used those extra two hours of zzzs. And then save myself the embarassment, but no. That fucking Siamese cat I call Prince couldn't have picked a better time to pester me with his noisy whining. So I smashed his face in with my Chucks, but the damage has been done. I was groggy with sleeplessness, but I can't indulge myself. Work is in two more hours, and I have the pacing of an earthworm.

I'm still maintaining it was the coffee that did it. After all, its far too easy to blame it on the addiction. m still sorry hough

Feeling Strongly

**Tell yourself this. I know it worked for me. Let me hold your hand so we can say it together.

How do you expect to inspire industry when you betray your own incompetence with vigorous scapegoating and the usual set of tired excuses? I mean, seriously.

Picture courtesy of cynic-tees.

Blog Soup #8: Of Red Smoke, Love, and Why You Should Love Your Siblings

Nine years is a long time for somebody to be maintaining a deathly bad habit. I started smoking in the year 2000 (mostly as a big Fuck You to them dime a dozen doomsayers. The end of the world didn't happen, so I might as well try smoking), and if I keep this up, then I might as well be exhaling red smoke in another year or so. I'm not a heavy smoker, but I keep a schedule. My recommended daily allowance of ten sticks (tops, Marlboro Lights) gets consumed in very specific intervals and moods. There's a stick first thing in the morning; I'm holding a cigarette before I do my toothbrush. And then there's another stick on my way to work. Three hours go by and its another stick on my first coffee break, two during lunch, and then one more before going home. Sometimes I take three sticks during lunch because an hour allows us a lot of time to scandalize, and nothing gets you smoking faster when its over the latest office gossip. I scatter two more sticks before I call it a day, and then it's the same song and dance all over the next morning.

With that being said, I can halfheartedly say that I don't feel my lungs collapsing in bloody papier mache lumps the size of closed fists, but the idea of exhaling red smoke has been nagging itself into recent memory any opportunity it gets.

My friends are either smokers, or they don't mind the secondhand smoke. I prefer the latter mostly because they never bum for a cigarette.

I love him in spite of his shallow skin deep tendencies. And, as expected, I'm willing to share some of his stresses if only he weren't such a drama queen about everything. I don't usually mind because, fuck it, I'm in love.

I've learned to realize that your siblings, not your childhood friends, are your best reminders of your own personal history. They're like Post Its that share your last name. This is mostly because, try as you might, there's just no letting go of the family you were born with.