Why they don't call me anal boy

One of my resolutions over the New Year was to keep track of my finances, seeing as I want to get a place of my own. And one of the things I've found after a couple of weeks of doing this is that I would make a horrible accountant.

After the first week, I found out that I was missing P24. Of course I was worried. If I can't keep track of small amounts, how the hell am I expected to handle house finances? The following week I kept receipts and listed down everything -- and I end up with an excess of P631. I was so surprised and worried about my inability to keep things in check that I forget to be happy that I have more money than I thought I had.

It really is becoming clear to me why I failed Math.

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Since I am a man of the gay persuasion, anal sex is something I am familiar with. Or at least something I hope to be personally familiar with. In the meantime, I will look at studies that say women who have anal sex get more orgasms.

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And just so I don't look too much like a whore, I decided to put this up at the end of the post: Check out my book blog!

A long way down

Before anything else -- I did it! I went out there and started a book blog. You can check it out over here. It's pretty sparse at the moment, but I have quite a few entries planned and a thing that I hope people will enjoy.

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Last week, I posted on my Facebook Wall the agonizing last words of programmer Bill Zeller. It's a suicide note written by Zeller, wherein he recounts being sexually-abused as a child and the damage it has inflicted upon him for the rest of his life.

It's a well-written farewell note, and I particularly related to this part the most:

I've told different people a lot of things, but I've never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons...It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don't blame anyone in particular, I guess it's just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am.

I've had my share of childhood trauma, and trust me when I say that it isn't being forced to sing in front of a group of visiting relatives. What I've found out from the five times (yes, I've only told it that many times) I've shared this trauma is that...it only results to more trauma.

The first time I told it was to friends I had when I was a kid. That...ended up badly. Let's leave it at that.

The second time I told it was to a classmate in freshman year, who then insisted that I tell it to our other friends. Other friends then went on to be...not receptive, to put it mildly. That sure taught me to shut my piehole.

The fourth time I told it was in junior year, when I was in a particularly vulnerable situation and was quite frankly overwhelmed by the presence of a guy that I liked. I felt that I was around people I could trust and who would sympathize with me. While I wasn't mocked, I didn't exactly get any sympathy either. More like an apathetic shrug.

The fifth and final time I told it to someone face to face, I was told that I was just using it as an excuse. That stung. On the bright side, the person was extremely apologetic afterwards, and I've learned to dismiss it as just the product of us being stupid kids.

But I did tell myself, never again. Evidently, trusting people with that kind of pain will really just get you a whole bag of nothing in return.

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To continue with this delightfully morbid note, check out this depressing item from Valleywag: Facebook suicide note gets mocked, turns out to be real.

Books and a boy

Question for everyone: Should I start a book blog? An honest to goodness one, without any random entries about The Pee Lady or The Condom Shunner.

Also, should I do it on Livejournal? A lot of my friends who are also book bloggers seem to prefer Wordpress. Any other blogging platforms you guys think I should try out? Or is this whole idea of putting up a book blog a bad and misguided one?

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While that book blog is up in the air, let me tell you about this book i just finished reading: "Halo" by Alexandra Adornetto.

This is the fourth novel for the 18-year-old author, and is being branded as "Twilight with angels". The story is about an angel who falls in love with a mortal and the challenges they face. The epigraph is from Romeo and Juliet and Beyonce. Yes. Beyonce. Beyonce. BEYONCE.

The book starts out well enough. Adornetto isn't bad with description, and the way she depicts her heroine, Bethany Church, as being overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the human world after coming from the all white Kingdom of Heaven is done quite well.

Of course, all good things come to an end. The only problem with "Halo" is that the good times end less than a hundred pages into a 400+ page book. OHMYGOD.

With Bethany being an angel, you'd think that for once, we'd have an actual female lead in a YA supernatural romance with a backbone and who kicks ass. A heroine who takes control and schools the man for a change. But what we get is even more insipid teenage girl whining that everybody else has already lived through in the 10 million similar books that have come out in this genre.

It's hard to sympathize with Bethany as she is often portrayed to be overly naïve and constantly swayed by the other characters that surround her. For someone armed with the sum of all human knowledge, Bethany comes off as being no better than the mortals she is supposed to protect.

All the characters are flat and the world-building is crap. There is no dramatic tension or compelling plot for about 300+ pages and when the complication does arrive it is absolutely worthless and disposed off in the schmaltziest way possible that I kind of want to vomit poop.

Everyone knows about my problems with "Twilight". I have a lot of those. But it is absolutely depressing to me to find books that ARE EVEN MORE HORRIBLE. To haphazardly quote , "'Twilight' may have had lots of bullshit, but that bullshit struck a nerve." The sort of bullshit that you are fed in "Halo" isn't just unappealing, it is uninteresting as well.

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And since we're on the subject of bad books anyway, Snooki from Jersey Shore is now a published author!

It's been getting a lot of press (duh), with Jezebel dissecting a date rape scene and Slate interviewing Snooki's "collaborator".

My favorite tidbit about this book so far? That these lines were actually committed to paper: "Gia danced around a little, shaking her peaches for show. She shook it hard. Too hard. In the middle of a shimmy, her stomach cramped. A fart slipped out. A loud one. And stinky."

Wonders never cease.

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Finally, you all know I have a James Franco obsession.

So don't be surprised if I direct you guys to an interview where James Franco says "Maybe I'm just gay."

Brand new year, same old assholes

I believe the photo is from the AFP? French Press Agency?

My family welcomed the new year the same way we have for years now -- watching those wounded by fireworks being carried into the hospital right next door to where we live. There wasn't a whole of of them this time around, so I guess the Department of Health's campaign against fireworks really is accomplishing something.

I also went back to work yesterday, after failing at my holiday resolution to get some blogging done and make a dent on my reading backlog. I had everything planned for my first day back, and at first it seemed like everything was going swell. Everything I had planned for the day was progressing the way I wanted it to progress. But since 2011 seems to have it in for me, some deluded twatwaffle threw a monkey wrench into my plans and completely derailed my day.

However, I'm not letting it set the tone for the rest of my year. It's still pretty early, and there's still plenty of opportunities for me to make this year an awesome one for me. Here's hoping that any future complications won't be even tougher than yesterday's.

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Watch it while you still can!

One thing that I was able to accomplish was watch RPG Metanoia.

Truth be told, I was a bit skeptical about this movie the very first time I heard about it. Filipino animation isn't exactly what you would consider cutting-edge, and I was worried that it would be a gimmicky waste of my time like almost all of the films at the Metro Manila Filmfest.

I have never been so glad to be proven wrong.

From its thrilling opening sequence, to how well-written the characters and conflicts were, and even to its musical scoring, RPG Metanoia was such a pleasant surprise and a definite step in the right direction not just for Philippine animation, but for Philippine movies as well. A lot has already been said about this film, and I just want to focus on the fact that RPG Metanoia proves to our filmmakers that you can make a good, exportable film without it having to be about Filipino gays or living in the slums.

There is a moral, of course, and there are values that are being pushed, but RPG Metanoia doesn't do it in the ham-fisted way that mainstream movie productions seem to think will win awards. And unlike independent productions, it isn't grim and foreboding and it doesn't make you want to slit your wrists afterwards. A happy medium can be found!

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I love boys. I love tattoos. Boy with tattoos? SOLD!

HE HAS A NIPPLE PIERCING. HHNNNGGGGGHHH.


HE HAS TATTOOS NEAR HIS CROTCH. ALSO, HE SKATEBOARDS. BOY WITH TATTOOS AND PIERCINGS WHO SKATEBOARDS? THAT'S LIKE ALL OF MY KINKS.

There are three more pics over at Made in Brazil, who just named Mateus Hottest Brazilian of 2010. I have no problem with that.

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Finally:

Let's see if I still know how to do this

Here we are then. More than a month has passed with nothing but silence on my end. Not that anything earth-shattering has been happening in my life or anything.

A lot of things have happened since I last blogged about walking from the Cultural Center of the Philippines all the way to Intramuros. I interviewed two foreign authors -- Vikas Swarup and Lauren Kate -- which I guess is only a big deal because NOBODY COMES HERE. Well, Neil Gaiman, so I guess that evens things out?

I also took up Spanish, but that is on hold right now as my class is dissolved because there weren't enough people taking it. I still have my textbooks, though, so maybe I'll just wing it and try to learn all on my lonesome.

Christmas is also in the air over here, even if the weather is being uncooperative and enveloping us in a blanket of smothering humidity. I've been to a number of Christmas parties and have gotten some really great gifts, and one incredibly hilarious one in the form of a Jacob Black standee.

I've set it up outside our apartment, in a hallway that everyone passes through. So far, we've had three terrorized housemaids and four fawning teenagers.

I'm going to go on a break from work next week, which I'll probably use to catch up on my reading and probably to start blogging regularly again. I had initially planned on visiting again, but my finances weren't in order.

My goodness, I apologize for the utter boredom this entry has brought to all of your lives.

Walk of poverty 2010 edition!

As the people who follow me on my Twitter account already know, I had a #walkofpoverty a couple of days ago. It wasn't fun or pretty.

Those who don't follow me on Twitter are probably asking themselves what the hell a #walkofpoverty is and how I ended up taking one. Let me share my tale.

This isn't the first time I've been on a #walkofpoverty, although this is the first time I've actually named it. The very first one I did was in 2007, the details of which you can read here. That was a very sweaty day.

This year's iteration pretty much started out just like the one three years ago. I was off to cover the press conference of a theater company, and since I was running late I decided to take a cab to the venue, which was the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). That would prove to be my undoing.

Because just like the 2007 edition of #walkofpoverty, I had forgotten my wallet at home. But unlike 2007, this wasn't a jeepney I was in. This was a cab, and I most certainly couldn't just jump out of it and not pay. And I couldn't just ask the cab driver to take me back to my house and then back to the venue because I was already late.

So rather than take a trip to the nearby police station, I took a chance and offered the cab driver what I thought was a reasonable arrangement: He would wait for me outside the venue, with the meter running, and take me back home, where I would pay him. To my surprise, he agreed, and I thought that everything was fine.

Thirty minutes later -- after rushing through my interviews and not even eating any food -- the cab driver was gone. I spent about an hour walking around the CCP, checking out parking spots and side alleys where the cab driver could have parked. NOTHING.

My first thought was "OMG I DON'T HAVE TO PAY!". And immediately after that, "HOW THE FUCK AM I GETTING HOME?"

I thought about getting on a jeepney and jumping off at my stop without paying, but I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to make as quick an escape as I did back in 2007. Taking another cab and paying them when I got home seemed like a good idea, but I wasn't sure if I had enough small bills in my wallet to pay the cab driver. I didn't wan't to fight over change on top of everything else.

That's how I ended up walking all the way from the CCP to Intramuros. Here are six tweets recording the event for posterity.

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This is Joshua Bumpus

One thing I've learned in my years of being a gay man is that you do not mess with the trans folk or with drag queens. They may look fabulous, but they are more than capable of cutting a bitch.

Some idiot found that out the hard way when he tried to rob a transvestite prostitute.

I quote:

"He got the gun away from (Bowman), he grabbed (Bowman) by the hair and beat him down. He beat the (daylights) out of him," [Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Ryan] Nelson said.

That's about when several of Bumpus' friends, also dressed as women, flagged down Cincinnati Police Officer Dave Kennedy. Other Bumpus friends helped Bumpus beat Bowman."

I would not want a crowd of angry trans folk ganging up on me. Just saying.

Election, schmelection

Explanation here

Watching the news tonight, it boggles my mind that so much effort and money has been expended by some candidates running for positions on the baranggay level. I mean, really. It's a baranggay level position.

Yes, I know that there's a lot of money involved in baranggay positions. And that the fact they can hold multiple terms makes it especially lucrative for corruption. But still. IT'S. A. BARANGGAY. POSITION.

Maybe I'm just too much of a snob for my own good.

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As most of you guys know, I've had my phone stolen, I don't know, a bajillion times. And as anyone who's ever had their phones stolen from them, it's the loss of the contacts that hurts more than the actual phone.

Boy do I wish that all those thieves were as considerate as this Swedish thief.

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Finally, here's a link to The Evolution of the Geek.