drain(ag)ed yet trippy] [music| Wear Your Love Like Heaven -- Donovan ]
Now that I've recuperated enough to raise my head without fear of brain stew dribbling down the side of my face, I think it's high time to make an account of my holidays.
I've been meaning to do something to mark highlights of the recently concluded yule season but, as expected, schoolwork got in the way. Between hours of slaving over them and failed attempts at scampering away, there was very little time left for traipsing 'round the web.
That's been happening a lot the past year. Maybe this '09 I'll get to have juice enough not to lose to brain drain whenever I have something completely uninspired to share over LJ.
What I have here is a rare, one-day respite called a weekend. Of course, the entire Saturday was reserved for dropping in and out of dead sleep so it really doesn't count as a free day for recreational staring at the screen. So, here I am catching up on unfinished stuff that doesn't require a drip of brain matter.
( just 5 things )
provoked ][music| You're a Wolf -- Sea Wolf]
~“You’re a wolf, boy, get out of this town.
You’re a wolf.” ~
I believed this episode resolved when I passed the course. Didn't think it could've been drawn out any more than we have for the past 5 months.
Apparently, it can and, yes, he has.
( This will be long and abrasive. )
oh lordie] [music| Living After Midnight -- Judas Priest]
I tried my hand at 24 units on the same semester I was expected to conjure a workable thesis that showcased my skills as a Comm Major. To be honest I resigned myself to falling flat on my face from the get go. If there is such a thing as "'half expecting' to fail'", I had that.
I already had that low of an opinion of my academic capacity, but I never once expected to hit the floorboards of my self-esteem this hard.
60% of my Th151 grade truned to a heavy hitting F by the second big requirement and my only saving grace would've been my orals. Now, when have I ever done well where speaking well was required? Pagdating sa exam room, sa harap ni Rap-Raps, simple lang - Ako ay nagkalat.
AHAHAHAHA.
Greydzeroutendayfeckenpass! Scratch all that.
Sembreak na!
For all the disappointment in me (as a person/in the whole) he expressed over my standing, he takes pity and grants me a D. And, no, I did not appeal to Pity like some of his previous students are rumored to have employed in such a situation.
Fear-and-Loathing mode is over. Hello, Palawan or Pagudpud. Kung sesewertihen, Siquijor.
If I won't be so lucky, there's always the couch here in chilly Mendez-Nuñez where much needed pigging out and loafing about are due.
a little calmer] [music| Tubthumping - Chumbawamba]
~but I get up again~
because, I suppose, I have to.
I'm claiming my Nyarlie at Greenbelt tomorrow. I've decided it's time. Nevermind the gaping hole it leaves my bank account, the daily college grind continues to turn that much more intolerable in its prolonged absence. I'll need my music for the funeral procession towards acdemic doom.
Speaking of intolerable. Today, I have much hate for anyone who has it easier than me. Most notably for this guy on the other bed who sleeps all day, air conditioner at full blast, with no regard for my two-fifths of the electricity bill. I bleed myself for this money. Figuratively, of course, but a hemorrhage is a hemorrhage.
I also have to reiterate that I'm dying here; have been for the entirety of the semester (I kidja not). Yet it's only these past couple of weeks that I realize the futility of keeping all grades to an acceptable passing standard. I'm saying it plainly now: I'm failing every single one of my 8 classes.
Plus, I keep encountering dry spells of the necessary juices for writing scripts
and I feel our thesis has gone to shit, even if in reality it has not.
But whatever. Ika nga, na und?
(English, Tagalog, Deutsch - san ka pa?)
But there's a point to this post, a redeeming factor that offsets the grating whining of the first four 'graphs.
My mood just lit up like a dancing red light saber when I read this.
( happiness )
pleased] [music| Dancing - Bauhaus]
~We're dancing to the dark side of this tune~
I've found renewed vigor in writing my zombie short. It just hit me upon waking this morning.
It may be an untimely overhaul but this makes starting the first draft far easier. Back when my zombies looked at nothing more than a burgeoning population, I couldn't stomach my story. But now that they're treading on the abject, and this time a more personal premise, I find myself looking forward to the coming free time I'm setting aside to "sit on" this.
I'm afraid I may have to abandon any idea of keeping the script light and zombie romp-ish. If you've ever watched Zombie Honeymoon (I know; uninspired title), it might get that heavy on the drama. But, no, I'll find avenues for more The Lost Boys type of fun. There has to be a way to marry the two.
___________________________
I watched [REC].
I intended to sit-in for Horror Film Class but I got to the Studio too late. I didn't want to crash. Instead, I borrowed and copied a download from
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
rockerwitch .Can I say it was awesome? My brother is afraid of lone lights in the dark now.
Despite the lack of an apocalyptic climate, I enjoyed it much.
indignant] [music| Blood - Editors ]
I'm hesitant to complain about what happened in Theo class. (Not file a complaint, just complain in the normal non-confrontational manner of irresponsible blogging.) After all, it's incontrovertible that I was at fault. I did write the damned thing.
It's not the first time I've had a bad run-in with an educator or a school official resulting from something I was unfortunately compelled to write. See, despite my insistence that I simply cannot be trusted to write anything safe on gods without needless bleeding (on my part) and unintended insult (on everyone else's), I still have grades to consider.
I did a 3-page essay answering a question that wasn't the entire question. I rambled on for that length without even noticing I was headed the wrong way. "How does one listen one's god-given vocation?" I say, drop all pretense of looking. It was an honest, though not a well though-out, answer to a question. Not the question but an answer to one nonetheless. It's an honest, unmarred by malice, mistake.
Understand that for all my boldness and crude writing, I never meant to insult Sir Dy-Liacco. I liked the guy. He's a pet orphanage kind of guy, the one that takes in that dying pup/kit and feels for it in the name of honest to goodness good. The sap-happy many adore his Richard Gere aging and cutesy saint-like love of the little beasts, others revel in his amazing tolerance of academic driftwood like myself, and others still admire his ability to see past the blinders of Judeo-Christianity. I have no reason to attack his person.
I never insulted him. He took offense regardless. It threw him into seething rage.
He confronted me after class, all red and trembling, "the spirit [having left] him" so as to be rightly indignant at what was written in my paper. In red ink, he reacted in anger and disgust. He thought me malicious, rude and pretentious enough to assume that those who found meaning were pretentious. He misconstrued my answer with an attack on, and belittling of, meaning found in death and suffering.
I apologized, of course. I was in the wrong. I mistakenly took one question for an incomplete one and in the process, by circumstances of four other papers due on the same day, came out with a rushed, crude piece. All his accusations I never intended to cause. He would not believe that it was unintended due to length and the obvious gravity of the exercise to my final grade (30%). Understandable. I felt ashamed.
To him, I seemed the mean-spirited person out to attack anyone who had a well-meaning bone in one's body. I resented that thought. I resent that kind of person even when Theology was just Christian Living Education, even before gods were such a complicated matter to write about. That's not who I am at all.
I came into his office after regrouping some. The grilling left me dazed, unable to explain myself properly. I needed to apologize properly. And he did accept it this time around. But not without explaining in painful calm how, despite the lack of intent, despite circumstances, belief in any way in what I did write down makes me evil.
I'm an evil person, apparently, acting out of laziness and stupidity. I'm a hopeless case, hopeless as a person. This much, he said.
It hurt. It angered. Normally, I'd find it funny. If I didn't hold this person with any amount of respect I would have laughed it off. But it's Dy-Liacco, and it wounds me to think that he thinks that. I was suddenly disappointed, suddenly very insulted, suddenly feeling stupid for thinking this person was different from the other religion teachers in that other school that, once knowing about the gray area I inhabit, drew me out and attacked me in public as that bad example. They sometimes had a turkey shoot, they sometimes got shot down. But none of them I ever thought highly of. Dy-Liacco, I did.
This is not the whole of it. Not by a long shot. I've run through shame to indignation to anger to plain bug-eyed worry in this unexpected drama. Insult upon insult, visited upon me for one mistake. I didn't deserve that.
I may not find meaning in the things you hold close to your person. That does not make me a hopeless case.
Meaning takes time. I thought saints would at least recognize that one fact.
I thought wrong, assessed wrong, again.
~Don't say it's easy to follow a process
There's nothing harder than keeping a promise
Blood runs through your veins, that's where our similarity ends~
discontent] [music| Dashboard - Modest Mouse]
~Well we scheme and we scheme but we always blow it
We've yet to crash, but we still might as well tow it~
________________________________
Thesis Work
Travel to Zamboanga City turned from Delayed to Unclear to No Chance Of That Happening.
The stronger the MILF activity in Mindanao gets, the more our thesis becomes pointless. Why try to study the processes of othering, the possibility of offsetting the ritualized disparaging representation of Zamboanga which causes a break in Philippine identity if it's actually desired - killed for, even.
_____________________________________
Screenwriting
The zombie short film I 'plan' on writing isn't going anywhere. Conceptualization has grinded to an unexpected halt.
I never thought I'd be bored with the idea so soon. After all, I honestly like zombies (way more than vampires and only slightly less than werwolves). But, understand that I'm not attempting an earnest horror flick, more camp than creepy, really. Now, despite the horrific element, I can't seem to stomach how completely uninspired the plot turned out; how the premise just screams "lame".
Around halfway through the direction I wanted the story to take, it hit me how inane it was to start on a path without at least a tiny glimpse of a goal. I trusted my characters too well. (Yes, I side more with character-driven storytelling than in the plot-driven.) Only, it seems they weren't manufactured all that well either. They're very deficient, possibly unable to carry/lead anything to a satisfying end.
The sad thing that depresses me more about this turnout is the realization that even I wouldn't watch this. It's just so panget.
I need time to tweak things, not revamp. And I need much help that only feedback can accomplish. Unfortunately, when it was my day to lay out my story treatment and its step outline, the Universe decided to throw a typhoon 'Karen' in my way.
________________________________
~Yeah, it would've been, could've been worse than you would ever know.
Oh, the dashboard melted, but we still have the radio.
(The dashboard melted, but we ran it good, we ran it good)~
