This Might Seem A Tad Bit Inconsiderate and Selfish,

but then again, the heat is threatening to murder me alive. All i want now is a storm. A signal number 3 type of typhoon, one whose rain plummets to the earth like needles, or daggers, on a stretch of skin. A typhoon that can carry cold winds that ravage fields, that carry tin roofs, one that can snap hundred year old trees.

And i want it to last for a week, one whole fucking week, while i sit in front of my laptop, with a lit cigarette, drinking coffee, writing stories and reading books, just like how it should be.

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Currently Reading- On the Art of Poetry by Horace/ Catch-22

Currently Listening to- MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular

Bunnies

The truth of the matter is, if people can believe in a pale, messianic figure, who was born of a virgin, and was resurrected three days after his crucifixion and death, i can believe that a white bunny can lay chocolate eggs.

This is me after experiencing a three-hour procession.

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Currently Listening to: The Cure

Currently Reading: Catherine Belsey’s “Writing About Desire” and Aristotle’s “On the Art of Poetry”

Fuckin Posers (Yeah, Like the line from an N.E.R.D. Song)

Two-thirds lie about reading a book

It is the dirty little literary secret of which most are guilty but few openly admit: pretending to have read highbrow books like War and Peace to make ourselves appear more intelligent and sexy than we actually are.

By Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent
Last Updated: 7:37AM GMT 05 Mar 2009

Languishing on shelves up and down the country are copies of such worthy tomes as Leo Tolstoy’s epic, George Orwell’s political allegory 1984 and James Joyce’s Modernist classic, Ulysses.

But while we like to brag about how we have read – and understood – them, most of us simply lie, according to a survey released to mark World Book Day today.

Under the cover of an anonymous questionnaire, two-thirds of people admitted to fibbing about having read a book.

Surprisingly, given its brevity and pace, 1984 heads the top 10 list of books we falsely claim to have read.

The rest of the list is largely predictable, stuffed full of weighty volumes most have seen dramatised on television but not read line by endless line.

Besides War and Peace and Ulysses – which can both exceed 1,000 pages depending on edition – other unread works include the Bible, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert and A Brief History of Time, by Professor Stephen Hawking.

Many also bluffed about reading classics by the likes of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters.

In reality most people would rather pick up a JK Rowling, John Grisham or a Mills and Boon, the poll found.

The results show the lengths to which people will go to appear intelligent and well-read, said Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust.

He concluded it all boiled down to sex.

He said: “Research that we have done suggests that the reason people lied was to make themselves appear more sexually attractive.

“People like to be seen to be readers. It makes them look good.

“They said they were prepared to lie about what they’d read to impress people, particularly when it came to potential partners.”

People gamble that the object of their affection will not have read the book either, he said.

But he warned it was a high risk strategy: “If a date comes back with some obscure quotation from Proust then you might be in trouble.”

Of those who had lied about reading a book, 42 per cent said they had read 1984, 31 per cent War and Peace, 25 per cent Ulysses and 24 per cent the Bible.

Despite his exalted position heading a literacy campaign group, even Mr Douglas admitted having embellished his reading history.

He said he neglected to read all the Old Testament, despite having been required to do so for his theology degree.

“I did OK, I got a two-one,” he added shyly.

When asked who they really enjoyed reading, 61 per cent of respondents said JK Rowling, 32 per cent John Grisham and 22 per cent Sophie Kinsella.

Britons harbour a host of other guilty reading secrets according to the survey of 1,342 people, which was commissioned by the organisers of World Book Day.

Almost two-thirds of readers (62 per cent) turn over the corners of their books instead of using a bookmark, while almost half (48 per cent) have bought a book for someone else but read it first.

Only one in five (20 per cent) said they threw books away, whether they had actually read them or not.

Books we pretend we have read:

1. 1984, by George Orwell42%

2. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy31%

3. Ulysses, by James Joyce25%

4. The Bible24%

5. Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert16%

6. A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking15%

7. Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie14%

8. In Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust 9%

9. Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama6%

10. The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins6%

Authors we actually like reading:

1. J K Rowling61%

2. John Grisham32%

3. Sophie Kinsella22%

4. Jilly Cooper20%

5. Mills & Boon18%

6. Dick Francis17%

7. Robert Harris16%

8. Jeffrey Archer15%

9. Frederick Forsyth13%

10. James Herbert12%

Original Source of Article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/4938155/Two-thirds-lie-about-reading-a-book.html

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Poetry Post 2

Brief Lessons in Eroticism
By: Giaconda Belli
Translation by Stephen F. White

I.
To sail the entire length of a body
Is to circle the world
To navigate the rose of the winds without a compass
Islands gulfs peninsulas breakwaters against crashing waves
It’s not easy — though pleasurable –
Don’t think you can do it in one day or night of flowing bedsheets
There are enough secrets in the pores to fill many moons.

II.
The body like an astral chart has its coded language
When you find a star perhaps you’ll have to begin
Change course when a hurricane or piercing scream
Makes you tremble
A hollow in the hand you didn’t suspect.

III.
Pass a certain curve many times
Find the lake of the water lilies
Caress the center with your stay
Submerge drown stretch
Don’t deny yourself the smell the salt the sugar
The intense winds shaping cumulus nimbus within the lungs
Clouding the brain
Tremor of legs
Numbing tidal waves of kisses

IV.
Steep yourself in the humus slowly
There is no hurry, no wearing out
Don’t try to reach the peak
Delay the threshold of paradise
Cradle your fallen angel
Tousle her silky mane
brandishing your stolen sword of fire
Bite the Apple

V.
Breathe
Ache
Exchange glances saliva impregnate yourself
Turn entangle the skin that slips away
Find the foot at the end of the leg
Search for the secret step
The shape of the heel
The crescent bay of the arch
that forms the footprints
Savor them.

VI.
Listen to the shell of the ear
How the dampness moans
Earlobe approaching the lip sound of breathing
Pores that rise into tiny mountains
Shivery currents unsettling the skin
Descent gently the bridge of the neck to the sea in the chest
Whisper into the sound of the heart
Find the water’s source.

VII.
Traverse the Land of Fire
The Cape of Good Hope
Navigate mindlessly the joining of the oceans
Sail over the algae arm yourself with coral howl wall
Emerge with the olive branch cry bring forth all hidden
tenderness
Disrobe the looks of wonderment
Hurl the sextant from the heights of the eyelashes
Flare the nostrils

VIII.
Inhale sigh
Die a little
Sweetly slowly die
Agonize within the gaze sustain the pleasure
Turn the rudder spread the sails
Sail on turn toward Venus
morning star
—the sea like a vast mercuric crystal–
sleep you shipwrecked sailor!

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Living in Sin
By: Adrienne Rich

She had thought the studio would keep itself;
no dust upon the furniture of love.
Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
had risen at his urging.
Not that at five each separate stair would writhe
under the milkman’s tramp; that morning light
so coldly would delineate the scraps
of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers
a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own—
envoy from some village in the moldings . . .
Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,
sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,
declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror,
rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes;
while she, jeered by the minor demons,
pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found
a towel to dust the table-top,
and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.
By evening she was back in love again,
though not so wholly but throughout the night
she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming
like a relentless milkman up the stairs.

Comrades (And no, this is not a post about communism)

If asked if there is anything worthwhile that i shall acquire from my crap-ass job, the answer would probably be the bond that was forged by the buyers, not only as a team but as friends.

Admittedly, work is unbearable. The bosses have the brains of a pus-filled toenail and they have no regard or consideration for humanity and correct grammar whatsoever. If putting us through the gas chamber would ultimately produce millions of pesos that would be used to salvage the company from certain failure, they would do it.  The work is droning, almost robotic, and a tad bit too much given the amount of responsibilities that we have and the dismal compensation that we are receiving. But the constant pantry breaks, the regular gossiping, the random outbursts of frustration and laughter, and our combined hatred for the managers-that-be, always seems to makes it more bearable. Maybe, at the risk of sounding a tad bit cheesy, we owe each other some semblance of our sanity.

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Currently Reading: Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan/Tongues of Fire by Conrado de Quiros

Dumbing Down

Working at the company which i currently slave for also means that you have to dumb yourself down.

It’s very sad, really. A bookstore whose employees can’t understand a bunch of English statements strung together to form a procedure. Now, i have to create a flowchart in which they’ll be able to understand completely, in a very quick manner, a process that’s quite simple enough to begin with. Most of them don’t know how to speak english perfectly. Most of them doesn’t know how to use commas, periods and other punctuation marks. Most of them constantly use ellipses like they’re goddamn pills. Sad. Sad. Sad.

Oh, and because of this, just to piss them off, i plan to use polysyllabic words in the flowchart. Nyahahaha. (Insert Grammar Nazi laugh here)

I actually find it quite difficult to dumb myself down. I got so used to hanging around Ida, my beloved, who is both an erudite and a renaissance woman. I got so used to hanging around the Malate Literary Folio, who are crass, vulgar, immoral and tenacious, but infinitely brilliant and clever, even during inebriation. I got so used to the literature department, to professors, fellow writers and artists. I got so used to my block who are intelligent in their own right.

Thank the fates that my fellow buyers share the same sentiment with me, as in their brilliance and wittiness, they also find the need to lower their standards. For now, the only thing we can do is trap ourselves in the confines ofthe pantry, and insult them, quite endlessly, laughing, like we all just did lines of coke.

Sisyphus (only this time the rock turns out to be a multi-million retail store)

At the latter days of 2008, one of my colleagues in the retail bookstore in which I’m currently employed made a short speech regarding on how its highly possible that the purchasing department would greatly contribute in the difficult endeavor of turning the business around.

The former purchasing manager, an obese woman who grew fungus off of her neck, left the company in shambles with her laziness, her ability to make bad decisions, and her stupidity. The company was in a grip of a crisis, and the only thing it could do to prevent extinction was to hold on and live off as a parasite to its sister company. Why she was held on to the company for so long is beyond my understanding, although, one of my friends pointed out, that she was good at “hegemonizing” people, and because of this, she was able to twist my feeble and stupid boss’ head into believing that she would make the company grow and prosper. Upon her departure, courtesy of her people that actually cared for the status of the company, the responsibility of bringing the company out of its shitty hole fell on us.

My colleague who made the speech pointed out that we were aware of the management’s (to the general manager, down to the senior manager and the branch managers) inadequacy and idiocy, and because we knew better, we just had to work out the problems ourselves and do our best at actually making our superiors realize the error of their ways.

It has already been three months since that speech. In those three months, sales have gone down, men and women have been laid off, and our image continued to rot. Our competition, the bookstore with the red signage, grew, expanded and continued to step on us.

In the pantry, during one of our breaks, while laughing our ass off at the homosexual, incestuous undertones that we observed to have existed in the office, we suddenly, for no reason at all, came to the conclusion that what we were doing, that gargantuan project of turning the company around, was feeble and futile.

The management will continue on with their unintelligent existence. They’re ignorant of the welfare of their employees, drowning us in unnecessary work without proper compensation or consideration. They don’t know jack-shit about literature, or books for that matter. They try to find a logic and a formula on how to sell, which is odd and ironic, since it is a business that utilizes works of the imagination. They will always be inexperienced. They will always be like that, stifling and constricting us of the things that we can do to actually help, commanding us with unending projects that will not help the company in any way whatsoever, begging the vendors for full returnabilities and bigger discounts even at the cost of embarrassing themselves and lessening the credit memos that are not so big to begin with . And they believe, as if it was a faith of sorts, that what they’re doing are full-proof projects that would make them earn money.

And they wonder why the other bookstore is kicking ass.

Idiots, i tell you. There’s no way to go but down, you moronic pricks.

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Currently Listening to: The New York Dolls

Currently Reading: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffeneger

Poetry Post 1: Anagrammer by Peter Pereira

Anagrammer by Peter Pereira

If you believe in the magic of language,
then Elvis really Lives
and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.

If you believe the letters themselves
contain a power within them,
then you understand
what makes outside tedious.
how desperation becomes a rope ends it.

The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,
and treason to become atoners.

That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,
and an admirer is also married.

That if you could just re-arrange things the right way
you’d find your true life,
the right path, the answer to your questions:
you’d understand how the Titanic
turns into that ice tin,
and debit card becomes bad credit.

How listen is the same as silent,
and not one letter separates stained from sainted.

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