Tito Prof

Tito Prof has always been my image of the family career man. He was the image of a patriarch much like Vito Corleone in The Godfather. A man who does well in his job and understands that it is in only in the purpose of taking care of family that his job has meaning.

He has never been shy spending to provide new family moments. He bought a farm in Laur, so his mother could grow old in a peaceful place. He has always given the most money on new year. He brought crabs once. And in return has only received t-shirts and bottles of liquor.

When my father started a business selling chili garlic, Tito Prof would sell them to everyone who would visit him, asking for a sign-off. Literally, someone would need a signature for a document and he would try to add it to their purchase like an add-on to a burger.

When I was in high school, I needed a finepoint (0.3) pens. A 60-peso gel-tech pen would have worked just fine, sign-pens would have passed. But when I mention it to my parents, they told him, and he gave me one of his drafting pens. A Fucking Drafting pen that actual architects and Engineers who make buildings, and pipes and blueprints use; a pen that gave even lines and are engineered so precise and are oh so expensive. In his mind, it was obvious that I needed this, because I was in a high school drafting class. In one of my biggest regrets, I lost that pen. I hate myself for it every time I remember.

In college, he lent my parents money for a semester’s worth of tuition. No questions, just faith. I work hard to be worth that faith.

He was eloquent with his words, loving to his wife, sweet to his grandchildren. His voice was raspy from smoking cigarettes his whole life but it carried well. He spoke with the same gravitas whether it was a speech, or just a conversation.

At the yearly New Year’s Party, all the adult men would be at one table away from everyone else, drinking the liquor they all gave to each other. I figured the table was somewhere I would be when I became a man. I thought I would one day drink with all of them. Now that can never be.

Rest in Peace Tito.

Joining the 27 Club

The 27 club is a list of talented artists/celebrities who pass at the age of 27 either by suicide or drug abuse. Think the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse. These figures are part of a mythos that paints the picture of a tormented artist. A talent snuffed out of too early because it could not handle it’s own brilliance.

To be honest, part of me wishes I could join this club. A non-insignificant chunk of my soul wishes I had the talent people would think wasted upon my demise. Maybe at least then I would have something to favor about myself. But I am not worthy of this. If I were to pass in the coming year, the only tragic thing about my death would be my age.

These tortured souls found one thing that made life easy. The same vulnerability and passion that made life hard also made their artistic expressions easy. In the end, life boiled down to either the thing that gave them pleasure and meaning, or everything else. So far, it seems everything else eventually overtakes the one thing. And I wonder if that would be the thing that denies me entry to the 27 club. That I never found my craft. At this point, I am not tortured. Not having a purpose has provided me with enough bandwidth to sail on through everything else.

If I was to join the club I would have to find that one thing and spend the rest of the year perfecting it so that when the end comes, the skies would open and I would be welcomed to the hallowed halls of immortality.

A better writer would end this with an optimistic outlook of how if I acted like this would be the last year of my life (which it well could be), I would be better off by the end even if it wasn’t. However, you’re stuck with me, and despite all my pride and skill, writing may not be my thing.

364 days remaining…..

Insomnia

I have not been able to sleep well this past week. But when she’s here I can’t stay awake. I am a such a terrible boyfriend that I can’t even do the things I said I would when she’s gone. I have given up so much of the self-improvement I’ve promised. I do not know what to do about it.

I am fucking depressed.

It this feeeling of emptiness. Of the days just passing me but also not passing by fast enough. Days where I wake up early, I just open my phone and browse social media undtil I realize I have to wake up. I can’t take a shower without my phone because I can’t be left with my thoughts alone. Something has to be shouting in my ear. I get irritated by the times where I’m separated from my phone. I can’t focus on work.

I am fucking depressed

I would rather listen to same fucking podcast episodes again, read mediocre memes on reddit, watch a fuckton of youtube shorts than sit down and find something that will make me actually laugh out loud, cry or scream or feel anything else because that would be too much of a hassle. I can’t be bothered to put in any effort even when I know I want the reward.

I am fucking depressed.

Analogies and People lying to you

In my view, if you are listening to someone and they use different analogies every so often They don’t know shit about what they are talking about.

Analogies are great and effective tools for communication. A great analogy gives you a clear image of the intricacies of the issue. You are able to see the dynamics between two parties and intuit the rules of engagement them and process information fast. In the hands of a great orator, analogies can part the skies and reveal the light.

In the hands of lesser people, it’s a hack. What you’ll hear many politicians do when asked questions is they say what they want you to do and follow it up with an analogy. For example(this is a real speech I heard in a presidential debate), a veteran politician when asked why he should win over his much more inexperienced opponent will say “If you are looking for a driver, you want to look at his resume and see how he has done, who he’s worked for”. They’ll never set up the analogy and validate that it makes sense. They’ll just add it onto their point and leave it to the audience to make the connections. Makes it harder to spot the lie they just told.

Because while it is true that you do want a driver who you know and who other people vouch for, the dynamics of a driver and employer is not the same as a politician to the electorate. The analogy is not valid. But by the time you spot his deceit, he’s already finished and broadcast live to millions.

So many self-styled gurus will spout random shit in front of you and talk for hours but not say anything worthwhile. They will tear down your conceptions by transporting the discussion from the complex real world to the simplistic toy model scenario where their self-imposed logic makes sense. They’ll say random shit like

“A lock that opens to any key is a bad lock. But a key that opens any lock is a master key” is rooted in the ideology that sex is something women withhold and men have to extract and finesse. And idiots will use this to explain their double standard on female promiscuity. All they did was make the penis and vagina into vaguely familiar inanimate objects. They don’t explain why. They just say the same thing but now with a new image in your head.

There are great analogies in public speaking but they are used sparingly by great speakers. What they do is they set the rules for the transposition. They’ll set a scene that is relatable to you and and state the ideas that they are holding is true in both. if you want to hear good analogies, watch stand up comedians.

I have watched politicians stumble their ways through metaphors and analogies trying to fit complex political scenarios into almost sitcom-like scenarios involving livestock. Not once has one ever gotten me to nod in agreement. But to this day, the idea of happiness being a jigsaw puzzle you build having lost the picture haunts me. The image of your 20’s being the act of scooping out trash in a lake still pops in my mind.

Analogies are like bullets. One should be enough to get the job done, use too many and you’re probably shit at it.

Gladiator

It feels wrong to be idle. I can feel my body telling me to do something. It’s a ratchet throbbing in my chest. An erratic heartbeat pounding with anxiety. Perhaps when I get older and time has worn me down the beat will be a rhythm I can follow or maybe even control. Today, it just overwhelms me.

Better Days

Watching Better Days, you get the feeling that it goes on longer than it should. When Bei gets arrested, it should fade back to the present in Nian’s classroom. But the film continues and Police Officer Zheng Yi persists and hounds the truth. Chen Nian breaks down under the weight of having sent Liu Beishan to his death.

Of course, it isn’t the truth(Zheng Yi lied about the sentence). Chen Nian confesses and gets a light sentence of four years.

Bullying is wrong and, for the most part, the film tackles who should be responsible for such stuff. Are Wei Lai’s parents responsible for their daughter? Should Chen Nian’s parents be worth it? What about that punk girl in a crop top? The film plays hot potato with blame until it ends up in the police’s lap. And that is where China might have just passed this as a propaganda piece for state surveillance.

The crux of the issue for Nian and Bei is that they have no one but each other. They don’t trust the cops. Nian because the cops didn’t stop the bullying, Bei because of his history. So they decided to control their fates. The film then reproaches people who think they can live with that by showing how it crushes Nian’s heart that Bei will die. Because really, why should her future be worth Bei’s life? So it isn’t on Bei to correct the mistakes caused by bullying. (Lai’s death was accidental, but it wouldn’t have happened if not for the bullying.) Instead, Nian should have told the truth. She should have reported Lai when they came to her house, when they stripped her, or even when Lai fell. They should have trusted the Police(a stand-in for the government).

But because the police don’t have any teeth, it is important that they have the tools. They could only suspend two of the bullies because they didn’t have proof that Hu Xiaode died due to bullying. That’s one case they failed. The other would have been Beishan’s death. And while Beishan wants to be framed, it is a loss that he be punished for the crime since he didn’t commit it. If only they had proof.

So what’s the solution? The film says it’s security cameras. Justice is only done in the presence of proof.  In streets where there are cameras, Nian is safe. Lai gets scared when she realizes people can see her. She’s scared of evidence. Bei is plagued by his aversion to surveillance; he is aware he is being watched and maintains a distance from Nian.  In the last shot, he notices a security camera and continues along because he has nothing to be ashamed of.

Parasite

The Kims represent different facets of the underprivileged.

Mr. Kim Ki-Taek begins with humble envy, he respects and is astounded by the Parks. He thinks that Mr. Park works hard for his family and that’s how he’s able to connect to Mr. Park as a driver.  A naive belief he holds is that what separates him and Mr. Park is luck and education. That’s why he’s proud when Ki-woo is able to get an Interview. In fact, he thinks that the Parks are nice people especially because Mrs. Park is so gullible. That envy turns to anger when he learns how Mr. Park is physically revolted by his smell, a physical reminder of the difference between them. He’s so different, he can’t even smell it (He literally can’t smell as we see in the fumigation scene). After he hears that, he sees all the flaws in Mr. Park, that Mr. Park doesn’t really love his wife and thinks money is enough reason to do anything. So at the garden party, as Mr. Park’s son is literally dying, he is stopped by the smell. Mr. Kim’s idea of a mutual respect between them is shattered. Does he really smell that bad?

His wife Chung-sook, on the other hand, is more hardened. She is not interested in metaphors(“Food would have been better”) and is often calm and collected. She’s also not very good with people as established by the pizza box lady. She doesn’t like anybody, she thinks rich people are weak because they weren’t toughened. She also doesn’t feel any moral obligation to help anyone else as shown with her attitude towards Moon-gwang and Geun-sae. Her indifference comes back to bite her in the ass; as killing Moon-gwang led to Geun-sae killing Ki-jeong.

Ki-Jeong is basically the “golden girl” ideal. She is talented, beautiful and intelligent. She is able to tame Do-sang, forge documents, and lie convincingly. She’s clearly the most skilled of the family(everyone at least once, remarks how smart she is). Sadly, she’s also the one with the least drive. In a normal story, she’ll get discovered and rise to the level where she belongs. In this one, she dies, killed by a crazed nutjob.

Ki-woo is a little bit more on the nose. He wants to be “Min”. We know this because when they escape from the house, he says “What would Min do?”. He thinks that Min is rich simply because he’s better, so he tries to be more like Min. He dates Da-Hye, he tries to push away the drunk pissing on the street like Min did. He is living the best life. So, when the married couple in the basement fuck the plan up, he makes the easy choice to kill them.

 

Lolo

I was raised up until my teens by my grandparents. This wasn’t so clear to me up until today at 2 in the morning, but they did.

My grandfather was already 80 when I was born. He had nine children with my grandmother. I was the 20th grandchild. All the stories I heard about him were from World War II where rather than be captured, he decided to escape and walk the equivalent of the Death March. It is a shame that I never took an interest in his story. I am sure he was a great man who enjoyed a passionate youth and was hardened by the world. But I only saw him as the quiet old man sat in his old wooden chair, whistling a tune nobody else remembered.

I have no recollection of ever seeing him without assistance. He had a cane, then he got the walker and then before I left for high school, he was bedridden. When he still had the cane, he would sit outside and just sit there. Looking at nothing, or maybe he was watching me and my siblings play.

It is a scary thought to watch someone you care about deteriorate before your eyes. I cannot fathom how it feels to be the one going through it. But in the twelve years, I had my grandfather, I only saw him break down once and granted, we thought he was dying. Funny story about that time, he left me money. And I thought that was a landfall. It was actually “mickey mouse money” from world War II. On his “deathbed” he told me to be kind to my brother.

Lorenzo Bermuda was a great man, father and husband. It is a sad thing I wasn’t there when he died. But if it was any consolation, he passed surrounded by family and mourned by a community.

Three rules – Act One

My father was not a good father. He was also, in the eyes of the law, not a good person. He was a con-man. And at the beginning, he wasn’t very good at it.

Outlines

You are sitting on a park bench lost in thought. Nothing in particular; where to go next, how many people are here, how many leaves does an average tree have. Any topic. It Doesn’t matter what, just as long as it’s not about that.