With All Due Respect, Sirs

This is a short and shallow rant about the middleaged men in the gym where I go to.

First, Dude Who's Always Naked. Sir, please put some clothes on. Please don't walk around the locker room swinging your tiny dick, standing in front of the electric fan to dry your pubes off. It's gross. Yes, we're all men. But seeing a limp dick on someone on the downhill of life is disheartening, and stirs up fears inside our heads. You are not an attractive man. And, please don't try to chat me up, or chat my friends up, or chat just about any random strangers up, trying to find some common interest with guys you barely knew. This is the gym's locker room, not a dating lounge where you can approach your type and try to get them to give you their numbers.

Second, the Whole Lot of You Who Wear Brightly Colored Printed Underwear. I believe that men over the age of 30 should not wear loud, attention seeking underwear from Bench in the locker room. I am barely out of my 20's, and I already respect myself enough to stick to basic whites and blacks. You are going to the gym, you are not walking the ramp in a fashion show. It's sad how you want to call attention to your crotch in a room full of other men. And you're not even physically fit.

My problem is that you guys represent a Future Possibility that's scary for any man in his twenties: That someday, I might be one of those sad, desperate middleaged guys who'll compromise decency for attention.

Please grow up, and get dressed.

Siege Malvar's Abangers Playlist

Admit it. At one point in your life, you have fallen for someone already taken by someone else. We've all been in that situation of hoping from the sidelines, waiting by the bench. Here's my soundtrack for all the lonely hearts out there who are pining for a chance.

1.) Gallery / Galleria - Mario Vasquez // Halaga - Parokya ni Edgar

 "I can't take seeing you with him, coz I know exactly what you'll be in his gallery."

"Binabasura lang ng iba ang siya'y pinapangarap ko."

Baby, you're worth so much more than you give credit for.

2.) Lie About Us - Avant feat. Nicole Scherzinger

"And I know you've been waiting patiently for that day when we no longer have to lie about us."

Sabi nga sa pelikula, "Walang babaeng nangarap maging kabit!"

3.) Maybe - Neocolors

"Maybe it's wrong to say please love me too, coz I know you'll never. Somebody else is waiting there inside for you..."

And that's why I never did. 

4.) Can't Help But Wait - Trey Songz

"I don't want to come between you and your man, eventhough I know I treat you better than he can. I can't help but wait."

Derechahan: "Abang-abang na lang pag may time."

5.) Dilemma - Nelly feat. Kelly Rowland

"But oh, noooo, she got a man and a son, oh-oh, but that's OK, coz I wait for my cue, and just listen, play my position."

Dito lang me. Dyan lang you. No matter what I do, all I think about is you.

6.) Kabet - Gagong Rapper

The entire song is quote worthy.  Brings on the pain from the first line to the outro.

7.) Saving All My Love - Whitney Houston

"A few stolen moments is all that we shared. You have your family, and they need you there."

Hindi lahat ng kabit gustong maging legal. Minsan, OK na yung mga nakaw sa saglit. Hindi dahil OK na yun, pero dahil hanggang dun lang talaga. 

8.) Para Sa Akin - Sitti

"Kung ako'y mamalasin, at mayroon ka nang ibang mahal. Nguni't patuloy ang aking pag-ibig, magpakailan man. Di kita pipipilitin, sundin mo pa ang iyong damdamin. Hayaan na lang tumibok ang puso mo... para sa akin."

Beh. :p

9.) Akin Ka Na Lang - Itchyworms

"Akin ka na lang, akin ka na lang. Iingatan ko ang puso mo."

Promise yan.


10.) Senti - Yano

"Mahal ka ba niya talaga? Ako mahal kita. Mahal na mahal."

Sapul. Mahal na mahal na mahal na mahal na mahal na mahal na mahal na mahal kita. 

11.) Best Friend - Ravaughn

"I'm not your fucking best friend. I've been sitting on this bench too long while you're playing with those basic, fake chicks. Don't come complaining when they go wrong."

Ginusto mo yan, eh.

12.) Mahirap Magmahal ng Syota ng Iba - Apo Hiking Society

"Mahirap magmahal ng syota ng iba. Di mo matawagan kahit OK sa kanya."

Hi. Kaw ba boyfriend niya? Pwede pakausap sa jowa mo? Thanks. 

13.) Bukas na Lang Kita Mamahalin - Lani Misalucha

"Bukas na lang kita mamahalin. Sabay sa paglaya ng ating mga puso."

Can you help me build this playlist? Did I miss anything out? 

Video Blog - I can't sleep

Branded

Dun tayo sa totoo? Di ako natutuwang makita mga lovemarks niya. And we both know it's not just a marketing term.

Do you know the etymology of the word "brand"?

Before it became a marketing term, "brand" means putting a stamp, a logo of ownership, on the skin of livestock, particularly cattle.

Ownership on the skin.

It's usually done through the process of heating iron, and then pressing it on the skin of the cattle till it scars.

Just like he presses his mouth on your skin.

It must have hurt for the cattle to be burnt like that.

Brands can hurt. I should know.

The Assumption of Heterosexuality

I would like you to imagine something. This exercise is pretty easy. Imagination is a faculty that comes packaged with the very basic package of human functions.

Imagine a comic creator making assumptions that his hairdresser, an effeminate man prone to singing along to Mariah Carey songs, used to have a girlfriend.

Note that I did not specify the sexual orientation and gender identity of the effeminate man. All we know about him is that he is effeminate and his musical preference. Who he sleeps with is a mystery to us, as much as to the comic creator. For all we know, the hairdresser is a studmuffin who penetrates as many pussies as a private school administrator does (again, note my very careful aversion from specifying the gender identity of said private school administrator).

In any case, an assumption was made: that the hairdresser is heterosexual. This assumption was verbalized through a joke: "Pare, kayong mga parlorista, siguro ang dami ninyong chicks. Puro pwede pumipila sa inyo araw-araw eh."

I don't want to be the judge on how funny or ridiculous this joke is.

What I know is this: If we do not find anything DISHONORABLE about the assumption of heterosexuality, then we should not find anything dishonorable in the assumption of lesbianism. Every time we presume someone is straight should be just as offensive as presuming he's gay. When we ask about the existence of a girlfriend or a boyfriend, our mere choice of gender marker is offensive considering the availability in our vocabularies of the gender neutral term "partner".

This is a clear cut case of double standards where we are imposing a "normal" against an "abnormal", where people are being "offended" by other' people's private choices.

"Sorry I dishonored you," wrote Pol Medina Jr. to his publisher in his resignation letter.

I'm sorry, sir. But you have nothing to be sorry about.

Nothing Less than Great Expectations

I'm working on an epic project, and part of that project is taking a survey of great romances as depicted in literature. I plan on touching the kind of obsession shown in The Great Gatsby and Possession (A.S. Byatt).

I'm re-reading Great Expectations (Charles Dickens). I love the emotional range that Dickens made Pip explore and discover through the course of the narrative. I dream of someday being tapped to write a Tagalog adaptation of the novel. I think I'd modernize it, and set it in Manila. I'd have Coco Martin playing Pip, and Chinchin Gutierrez as Miss Havisham. I want to make the story easy to relate with for the Filipino youth.

Anyway, I'm wondering, what other works of literature have you guys read? Which ones stirred in you emotions so great that it changed your perspective on love and romance? I don't want to hear any of that Twilight crap, because the moment anyone of you suggests it, I'm going to bitchslap your vampire fangs out of your filthy vampire mouths.

Help me build a reading list of the world's greatest literary romances! Leave comments.

Someday, Somehow

I will chase you through the labyrinth
Of impossible monsters and probable causes
Until we both take a right turn
into each other.

See, I have been cursed with a mind
That can unlock possibilities at the quantum level
And I won't stop until I find the one
Where you are as much mine as I am yours,
And I'll hold that ion and stretch it into eons,
Until Time runs out and find us dancing
In the dark of dying stars.