The Month That Got Away

It’s September 19 today, and I have only just noticed that the month is halfway done. Dang, eighteen days just got away like that! This September has gone by too quickly it’s befuddling for me to recall all of what happened, none of which are remarkable anyway, so I won’t bother talking about them. What I’ll do here is to throw a bunch of ideas that I’ve accumulated and that I have been meaning but haven’t gotten around to posting. Please bear with me if things are unpolished, because although I want a cleaner entry, the desire to update my blog as soon as possible after neglecting it for a long time have gotten the better of me.

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Before last Tuesday, I had spent a month not logging on to yahoo messenger, twitter and plurk, and not participating in any message boards too. I only used Facebook during those times, and even there I wasn’t very active.

I did such things partly because I needed to finish some unfinished businesses, like the projects that sneaked to my workload when I wasn’t looking. I also had to write longhand letters to a total of 24 recipients, and then read 5 books in a matter of a week (which I managed to extend to 10 days. The result of that endeavor can be read here).

Right now, I am almost done with writing those letters, and I feel very spiritually fulfilled. No, really, I’m serious about that. Of course, emails are easier and more practical ways to correspond. However, since typing - more than writing by hand – easily results to several words per minute, an email is also quite prone to be prolix and hastily-composed. In longhands, I try to be very patient. I ruminate before putting down a sentence. After all, when I make a mistake I either strike through the misplaced words, or just discard the entire letter and start all over again. Mistakes always look uglier on paper than they do on e-forms for rich-texts. I like the patience and the discipline longhand letters makes me cultivate.

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Anyway, I missed using those major internet social communities (Yahoo Messenger and others), but at the same time, I enjoyed being absent. Actually, the remaining part of the reason I didn’t go online for a month was so that I could get away from them. I needed some quiet, some time to reflect on what’s going on with my life, plus I think I lost my taste for the trifling small town dramas that tend to blow up on online social journal sites like Twitter and Plurk. I think that happens because many Twitterers/Plurkers take those community too personally. Oftentimes, they divulge every details of their daily lives, from the time they wake up (which is always late) to the time they fall asleep (which is always after they have watched porn and gotten exhausted as a result) and sometimes those details are just too revealing for comfort. Sometimes they join cliques and then fight with other cliques, which is like turf wars except instead of gangers it’s opposing factions of internet nerds who are fighting. Sometimes they gloat. Sometimes they speak badly of others while keeping the offender’s identity a secret, so that their “fans” will be eternally curious and thus beginning a long-standing back-and-forths of “please-tell-me-who I’ll-give-you-a-clue I-hope-it’s-not-me-coz-I-love-you Aww-don’t-feel-bad-about-yourself-here-I’ll-give-you-a-hug *omg I’m hugged by my plurk crush I’m getting a boner now* \m/” (oh yeah, that smiley with a \m/, it’s always that.) Sometimes they gloat. Sometimes they just intentionally kill people off their friends list just to stoke animosities. Sometimes they gloat, gloat, gloat, like there’s just no more way to move a muscle without writing a certificate of achievement about it. Who gives a damn how you romanticize yourself in print anyway, when it is very possible for you to think of yourself as someone entirely different from who you really are?

I’m tired of seeing all these happen. I know they happen in real life too, but in real life I don’t often have a choice to ignore and to walk away. Don’t get me wrong: select Twitterers/Plurkers are remarkable; sometimes conversations like this recent one from Sexynomad happen. On the other hand, there are jerks too, and I try to be cordial to them even if they treat me like crap; it’s really surprising because some of them are nice when you meet them, but then put them online and they go Mr. Hyde. I will never forget the time when I got involved in a Twitter drama with two bloggers I respected; they got mad at me only because I wanted to add them in my Yahoo Messenger’s contacts, weeks after they had sent short stories straight to my email without notifying me beforehand.

I just reemerged in Plurk, but I don’t intend to use it that much anymore. I’m tired of squabbling in places where you can’t even make eye contacts.

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I’m voting Mike Villar for Philippines Blog Award 2. I’m not particularly familiar to him and we’ve only seen each other once, but I’m voting him because he is an icon. You know all these brands of internet humor you often see in Filipino blogs? He is the one who have made them popular – his style is that influential. He is influential because whenever he takes a new approach at writing his funny stories, others are agape and hungry to see his new gags, so that they can then abuse those new gags. Despite all that, he consistently sounds fresh while others grow stale with their kthxbai and their “funneh” lolcat-speak.

I wanted to vote Filipinovoices too, but their Ben Paypon post was ghastly, and they have a lot of new writers and new articles (especially the ones that criticize MSM) that I’m not too crazy about. I think I have to read their 10-paged manifesto soon.

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I recently saw Wong Kar Wai’s 2046, and I love it despite thinking it as a very flawed film. I will go into details next time.