every saturday i have home planet sickness

most of my dreams are weird. me flying is a common thing, even when im quite sure it's against the sandman's predetermined script. i once had a dream where the world was ending and the only way to stop it was to speak a word written on a cave wall. i have since forgotten what that word was so sorry, world. another unforgettable dream i had was what i called the loop where i kept waking up into a dream (predating inception by more than a decade), the scariest nightmare i've ever had.

anyways, the one i had last is right up that alley. in the dream i slept and dreamed another dream that was somehow connected to the first layer dream, and i was discussing it with someone i cant remember who. but the one thing that latched on to my consciousness was what was written on the shirt i was wearing which i saw when i faced a mirror (which is weird in itself because even though i was facing a mirror, the words weren't backwards):

EVERY SATURDAY I HAVE HOME PLANET SICKNESS

to me, it's a year's worth of wtf. i'll never know how my brain came up with that or where it picked that up. first thing i did when i opened my eyes was get up, of course, and then turn on my father's laptop, sit on the swivel chair, click the chrome shortcut and search the exact sentence in google. zilcho. so i sought refuge in reddit and asked for help. first reply i got was the most obvious explanation: you're an alien. well, im not. some said it could be a mnemonic thing like every good boy does fine. some said, in support of the alien theory, that saturday means saturn's day, and so i have home planet sickness on that particular day because my home planet is saturn. some said it's the result of my brain just putting a bunch of subconscious data together, which i already know.

overly long sigh. i guess i'll never get a definite answer to this riddle because i think that would mean trying to make sense of the mysterious ways the brain works. i just thought maybe it was something that already existed and my mind just plagiarized it. i'll be content with knowing it was an original subconscious creation.

p.s. what im quite sure of is im gonna have that printed on a shirt. yeah.

a thousand words

i'm not a photographer nor am i an expert in photography. im not even sure if they're the same thing. but i do know shit from gold. also, i hate trends. so when this picture-taking trend exploded, i saw shit everywhere. suddenly, every person with a dslr hanging from their neck is a photographer. suddenly, they're watermarking their snapshots and offering their services online. it's like these people bought a sword from the store and started calling themselves warriors. well, money can buy happiness but it can't buy talent.

sure there are workshops and trainings out there, but those can only do so much. oftentimes, these gatherings produce only by-the-book photographers who can't think beyond what they've learned. as i've said before, true talent is inborn and it can't be replicated by wannabes.

so what do these incompetent buffoons do? they turn to photoshop. what their photos lack, photoshop provides. didn't have proper lighting? tweaking curves and levels will do the trick. boring background? add some royalty free clouds. lines on subject's face? airbrush that crap out. airburshing gets the most abuse as some magazines have covers sporting mannequins. what is wrong with these people? great photographers plan and prepare for their shots. they don't just push the shutter button and let photoshop handle the rest. a little color correction and editing some unwanted stuff is okay. but beyond that is a subtraction to the photographer's credit.

i knew someone who photoshops every picture taken and actually proud of it. they'd add grunge effects, filters, textures and the like just to make the photo "better". they'd take a picture and then make it black and white in photoshop. why not shoot it in black and white in the first place? what's the dslr for then? it's acceptable to do all of these digital manipulations on a photo from a point-and-click digicam. a dslr is expensive for a reason: there are things you can achieve with it that you cannnot with a digicam and you should spend time to learn them instead of depending on software to cheat and fool your fans/clients.

so to anyone who owns a dslr, print this and stick it right below the viewfinder: great photographers don't rely on photoshop.



p.s. there are only 373 words on this post.
p.p.s. christopher lao: if you are so goddamn smart as your allies say you are, you should have admitted your mistake of turning your car into a buoy instead of being a total douchebag idiot and blaming others for not telling you what's already obvious. fuck you.

year two

for two years, you have endured my existence and forgave my shortcomings. i am a slob, a deviant and an occasional asshole, but you've put up with me every time. a medal forged from a meteor won't even suffice to represent how awesome you are. i love you, m'lady. for everything you've been/done/given to me, thinks.

the tranquil monarch

when i was young,the only thing i knew about papang was that he was rich. he was like a beardless santa claus to us. on the rare occasions he would visit, my siblings, cousins and i would line upon his arrival, one hand ready for the mano, the other palm upward for the legal tender. on our birthdays, he'd come and bring the best gifts. these appearances became fewer as we grew up until the tables were reversed and we visited him instead. and we realized that he was not ours alone. he was zeus, who had many wives and fathered many children, who in turn gave him other grandchildren. however, we didn't feel different about him for we had nothing but respect for him.

being a man of a few words, he did not force it upon us; it was automatic. being with him was like being with a king. you had to be at your best behavior. even the drunkards and boors knew courtesy in his presence. part of it as, i guess, his lotharian legacy. but im pretty sure it was primarily because, at his age, he was still hard at work. instead of reading newspapers on a rocking chair, he went to his office and did paperwork and managed his business. (once, i was going home on a holiday and he was in his office signing papers.) and he'd been doing this his whole adult life. he was a self-made man and i admired him for it. he was my don corleone.

that's why it tore my heart to pieces when i found out he had passes away. it was too sudden. i did not know that visiting him in the hospital was the last time i'd see him breathing. he'd been sick before but he recovered from it quickly. some people say that it was his time. i& disagree. it was not his time. i just had lunch with him about a month ago and he was in a great health. on the day he was admitted to makati med, he was still giving detailed orders to my father regarding the business. it was not his time to go. death miscalculated.

when my wife told me on the phone, the tears just burst. i really had no inkling that he wouldn't survive. had i known when i was in the icu room, i could have at least said thank you to him for everything we owe him. which is a lot.

papang always insisted that i was smart. everytime my name would pop up in a conversation, he'd comment how smart i was. i was a very intelligent kid, but he kept this up even when i dropped out of college and basically messed up my life. now that i've pulled myself together with my own family and a stable job, i thought i was on my way to live up to what he'd been bragging about. it's too sad that he'll never get to see me prove worthy of the surname and make him completely proud of me as his first grandchild. it's even sadder that he'll never get to know his great granddaughter better, and vice versa.

wherever he is now, he's probably with mamang and getting the biggest ear-pinching of his life, but happy nonetheless, because the greatest advantage of having many families is the vast amount of genuine love we collectively give him back. rest in peace, papang.

p.s. of course, my grandchildren shall call me papang.