HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN...JIGGEDY-JIG

The Joys of Post Traumatic Stress

2006-01-13T09:16:00.000-08:00

Every time we try again
It goes up in a puff of smoke
Every time we play the fool
We somehow become the joke

Every time we open our mouths
Things get uncomfortably terse
Every word that's left unsaid
Is so much easier said in verse

Every time we give a shit
Shit's slung back into your face
Every one gets so disturbed
When the words are out of place

Every time one speaks the truth
It is met with a barrage of lies
Every time we endure the taunts
We'd secretly prefer to cry

Every time we try to forget
It comes back in a whirlwind
Every time we think it's figured out
It just becomes new again

An Insomniac's Lament

2006-01-13T08:43:00.000-08:00

absolute madness-
my fingers drip with blood
the keyboard's thorny stab
with each rat tat tat I type
bouncing through my cranium
every painful mem'ry
a searing scar inside
a tattoo of remorseful crap
that I can't seem to purge

absolute regret-
the screams defy the rage
shattering me to pieces
with each gulp of air I take
dissolving all my gray matter
a soundless fucking torment
twisting my insides
into lava scorched knots
that nothing seems to quench

absolute sadness-
my soul is so dammed weary
I've turned out all the lights
and whenever I close my eyes
it bounces though my cranium
while I beg for silence
droning on and on inside
a cacophony of needless shit
when I just want to sleep

~ Friday the 13th, Jan. 2006

I actually started this poem the other night, in a Xanax-filled insomniac haze and finished it now.

DISTURBING FAN MAIL

2006-01-08T13:58:00.000-08:00

A deranged fan of my other site sent in an email detailing his fetish. Apparently, I was on a "most wanted" list of this person's all time most desirable women. My friend, the fetish model Persephone (sickchixx.com) also received a similar email from this fellow.

THE CREEPY LIST. SEE IF YOU KNOW ANYONE ON IT:

CREEPY TOP LIST OF MOST WANTED WOMEN

Persephone encouraged me to post this on this blog, as I get a few more flips reading this. There are a TON OF Filipina, Thai, and Japanese artistas on the list as well. He sounds like one of those serial killers who marry and bring Asian women home and kill them if they don't do what they want.

Apparently this man wants to DIE at the hands of a woman, during orgasm. READ his stuff. It is mind boggling. He details his sordid plans out very specifically on this website. He is absolutely obsessed.

How this little egomaniac could get a woman to go to prison for his deluded ass via his murder is beyond Me.

you can go to the pages he sent Me at:

www.thewebninja.com

or you can ditch the weirdness (highly entertaining though it is) and skip to his index:

INDEX

Whatever it is, it IS CHILLING.

RESOLUTIONS, RESOLUTIONS

2006-01-02T00:41:00.000-08:00

Someone sent this to me and I thought it was hilarious.

New Year's Resolutions

As we all start a new year, it is time again to make those ever so important New Year's Resolutions. I have faithfully made such resolutions in the past, and while I haven't been able to keep all of them, I have tried my best to continue making progress on them year after year. Following is my revised list of "New Year's Resolutions - 2006 Edition":

Resolution #1
2003: I will try to be a better husband to Marge.
2004: I will not leave Marge.
2005: I will try for a reconciliation with Marge.
2006: I will try to be a better husband to Wanda.
Resolution #2
2003: I will stop looking at other women.
2004: I will not get involved with Wanda.
2005: I will not let Wanda pressure me into another marriage.
2006: I will stop looking at other women.
Resolution #3
2003: I will not let my boss push me around.
2004: I will not let my sadistic boss drive me to the point of suicide.
2005: I will stick up for my rights when my boss bullies me.
2006: I will tell Dr. Hodger and the group about my boss.
Resolution #4
2003: I will read at least 20 good books a year.
2004 I will read at least 10 books a year.
2005: I will read 5 books a year.
2006: I will finish Prey.
Resolution #5
2003: I will not get upset when Charlie and Sam make jokes about my baldness.
2004: I will not get annoyed when Charlie and Sam kid me about my toupee.
2005: I will not lose my temper when they tell the guys I wear a girdle.
2006: I will not speak to Charlie and Sam.
Resolution #6
2003: I will get my weight down below 180.
2004: I will watch my calories until I get below 190.
2005: I will follow my new diet religiously until I get below 200.
2006: I will try to develop a realistic attitude about my weight.
Resolution #7
2003: I will not take a drink before 5:00 p.m.
2004: I will not touch the bottle before noon.
2005: I will not become a "problem drinker".
2006: I will not miss any AA meetings.
Resolution #8
2003: I will not spend my money frivolously.
2004: I will pay off my bank loan promptly.
2005: I will pay off my bank loans promptly.
2006: I will begin making a strong effort to be out of debt by 2009.
Resolution #9
2003: I will see my dentist this year.
2004: I will have my cavities filled this year.
2005: I will have my root canal work done this year.
2006: I will get rid of my denture breath this year.
Resolution #10
2003: I will go to church every Sunday.
2004: I will go to church as often as possible.
2005: I will set aside time each day for prayer and meditation.
2006: I will try to catch the late night sermonette on TV.

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND IF THE SHOE DOESN'T FIT...

2006-01-01T15:44:00.000-08:00

Last night I rang in the New Year at a fabulous cocktail party and am now heinously hung over. I have laid in bed all day bemoaning my condition.

Luckily, my trusty laptop lives next to my bed.

I had a lovely talk online with my director today. He is still in Manila.

I thought about Manila and feel it was a bad fit for me, like a really tight shoe that pinches your toes and gives you bleeding blisters. People remarked at the party that they had missed me and that I have changed a bit. I think so. I am glad.

Even if I didn't really care for much of my experience, I came away with a vast amount of soul growth. I also am unashamed to admit that I enjoy the fetish aspects of my work MORE because of it. I am glad to be in an environment where people can express themselves without as much censure or embarassment as I faced in Manila.

I am not good at those types of reindeer games.

Besides, I have much much stuff that I am working on for my website.

I really enjoy finally being able to be ME AGAIN.

Someone on IM asked me about tarot cards. In Manila, I utilized those things (which I NEVER use here) because my types of readings scared the hell outta people. She was surprised, I think, when I gently told her that they had been thrown away. I don't need em.

People in N. America are more 'talk show' oriented and less afraid of their problems being unveiled in public than the average Manila-ite I encountered. I LOVE being able to freely speak my mind without people looking at me with a paranoid gleam in their eye.

I am so glad to be home. It is comfy like a well worn shoe.

UPDATED PHOTOS ON THE WORK IN MY HOUSE!

2005-12-30T13:13:00.000-08:00

I own a 1910 Edwardian style 4square house. It is over 4000 sq feet of RENOVATIONS IN PROGRESS. I am mostly doing all the woodwork restoring, plastering, paint, design myself...with a few exceptions. I love doing this stuff.

I rented a huge 20 yard skip/dumpster and started throwing out everything I didn't want. Here is a photo...plus a pic of the snow we had:

There are also pics of my NEARLY COMPLETED LIBRARY. I still need to get the shelves installed and put the wood moldings and baseboards back. Please note my prize 1930 French Deco table and my comfy Mies Van der Rohe daybed...:)

Below are the front parlor of my house with bay windows and the adjoining dining room (where the furniture currently resides). The walls were scraped bare to the plaster. 5 layers of wallpaper = almost 100 yrs were removed. I am still contemplating what to do with the wall color scheme and lighting. Any input is welcome.

I actually have another sala upstairs where I keep the tv and ps2 and dance dance revolution and karaoke and nintendo and xbox and game cube...hehe, you get the picture. My bird also lives upstairs in front of the telly, so my cats do not eat him. He loves video games.

PICKING APART ANDY MALUCHE'S INTERVIEW

2005-12-29T16:11:00.000-08:00

I was stumbling o'er to the lyrical blog of TORN AND FRAYED, via my pal Andy's blawg. It had the following post:

Apparently, it is dear Andy's interview. I will dissect it for my amusement.

3 things that scare you?
George Bush, nationalism, religion.

OK, I CAN AGREE WITH THAT.

3 things you want to try in the next 12 months?
Sex tied up, make money, blow everybody's mind.
But maybe I'd just like to smoke a joint.

I COULD HAVE TIED YOU UP...PROBABLY NOT THE SEX, BUT I WOULD HAVE WILLINGLY TAKEN PHOTOS.

3 things you just can't do?
Lie, dance, live without beer.

BRAVO. I CAN SUBSCRIBE TO THE FIRST TWO. I HATE BEER.

3 things you want to do really badly right now?
Jump in a car, go to the beach and have this interview there, smoke a joint, make wild, crazy, erotic love

OK, NICE FINISH.

I am sooo glad you are feeling better.

MUST SEE MOVIES and a few MUST NOT SEE MOVIES

2005-12-29T14:58:00.000-08:00

It is cold here in North America. Not as cold as it was a couple of weeks ago, but it would still freeze a Manila-ite's buttocks off.

I've been catching a ton of movies lately. There are no bootleg copies to be had (sigh) in my neck of the woods.

A few I recommend:

WALK THE LINE -Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon do their own singing. Lovely, lovely. Turned me into a Johnny Cash fan.

THE ISLAND- Nice action flick. Check out the stealth boat. I know the person who helped design the stealthy technology on it.

40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN- ok, I will admit to a HUGE crush on Steve Carrell. He is just so darned cute. I usually have an aversion to crushing on comics, but SC can deliver his lines with aplomb.

HARRY POTTER- the best movie of the HP bunch. Echoes the book better than any of the others. I was truly impressed.

Ok, I HATED:

DEUCE BIGALOW-EUROPEAN GIGOLO- I usually like Rob Schneider, but this was plain stupid. The writers need to be shot.

FOUR BROTHERS- yuck.

DOG EAT DOG ALL OUT BUGGERY BUFFETS OF SE ASIA

2005-12-29T13:44:00.000-08:00

There are places out there, in this big wide world, that a-body just wants to gulp down whole and swallow the entire experience.

I learned that there is truth to the saying "a dog eat dog world".

Those very same delicious places may find you good enough to eat. It will spit you out, bones and all, after sucking the very marrow outta your soul.

I learned these things the hard way.

I was naieve to believe that being a good person was enough. I still have those feelings somewhere inside me, but I have learned that you can't stick your ass out of an open window without someone wanting to shove something into it or swat you.

Manila is like that. It is the proverbial dog eat doggery, all-out-buggery, all you can eat buffet for 5.99. You gorge yourself without thinking of all the nasty little things that could be lurking in its plates of merienda. You go home and throw up in technicolor, but in the back of your mind you would do it all again.

Yeah, all of it, though I would do some parts differently.

I wouldn't have taken that offer to rent the room in QC, for one.

I would have avoided certain whining 'help me, help me' sycophants with the fecal touch like the PLAGUE.

I would have gotten on that plane to that resort...and eventually would have gotten the advice to get the hell out of that house.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda...it is all water under the bridge now.

Little Dusty Boxes...or floods in the mind's eye

2005-12-29T08:17:00.000-08:00

I have kept busy as a bee these last months. The nightmares I encountered in Manila [I thought] had dissolved into the furthest edges of my memory.

Boy, was I wrong.

With the slower cadence of the winter season and the dreadful ZEN of spider solitaire, these things I thought I'd purged worked their wormy way into the front of my mind.

I am flooded with emotions and incredulous SHOCK that most of this shit even happened. It is like being Alice down the rabbithole and having the experiences come back a la post traumatic stress disorder. Actually, now that I write this, I think it is probably what I've been going through.

I am filled with anger, sadness, dismay. I think of all the crazy lies levelled at me, accusations (as IF my NORMAL life wasn't outrageous enough). I think of being brought to court over a TYPE OF FAIRY CREATURE. I think of friends whom I lost due to another American with serious borderline personality probs and hysteria. I think of certain funny people with their paranoid musings and letters written en masse about shit that never happened, but the people said it did.

Mass Hysteria.

I am not perfect. I am, however, pretty honest and in the playing field of absolute ballocks and insanity, that wasn't a good thing to be. Hindsight is 20/20, after all.

The absolute gem of it all is that HAD I been a manipulative, lying game player I would have done quite well and fit right in.

SO, after half of year of actively trying to FORGET, it comes like spring that someone pulled halfway 'cross the room and let go of...whilst laughing maniacally.

I find that I am still angry with dena's lies...more so that the poor insane sod who had the nerve to take me to court. SHE may have had borderline personality issues and was a paranoid git, but she was also a hurtful, spiteful skinny little bag of spite. She knowingly and jealously lied to drive a wedge between me and the people I cared about. It worked.

So, as a friend of mine used to say:

"GOOD FOR HER"

I am venting...coz I need to and because I am not afraid of being shunned, after all. I am half a world away and already maligned to high heaven...

I am venting because I suddenly find that some of the pain is just as fresh as it was and I in shock because of it. It happened all of a sudden.

It isn't really just that girl. The culture or whatever that fosters such petty mean behavior is the thing that is flawed. People with their desperate need for social approval, attention, whatever. People who don't care what or which or whom they have to sully to get to be king of the mountain.

I went to Manila to try to discover my FILIPINO ancestoral heritage and ended up a shell shocked, horrified AMERICAN.

"Good for me"

Sigh. Mean People suck.

Let's not dwell on the bad. There were many, many good...however, it is the bad that has suddenly left me paralyzed and in the gloom after 6 months of actively trying to forget Manila.

Oh, ok, let's just dwell on the bad then.

I can write about the good later.

I have been almost unable to bring myself to communicate with anyone from that part of my life in the last month or so. I have been so depressed all of the sudden over it. I am like a deer frozen in headlights and dismayed that it should so suddenly have such a sway over me.

I thought I was over it.

I have these boxes in my house ready to be shipped to Manila...oh, for about a few months... gifts to my remaining friends.

Friends who stop by keep asking me why I don't send them...why I leave them at the doorway and dust them and say 'later, later".

What they don't know is that it terrifies me to the core to send them, to send even an iota of myself back there to be examined, ridiculed, lied about, kicked down.

I put all my soul and love for those people in those little boxes.

Irrational, I know. I will get over it and I probably will even go back to Manila.

I just want to examine this mire I am in currently and get past it. I thought I had left it behind when I came home.

I want to release the anger.

I want to kick all the bad juju back to where ever and purge...maybe that is what I am doing now.

I still have a long way to go.

GOOD FOR ME.

Maybe I should write a realllllly bad book about my experiences, like I saw some chick do on Celdran's blog.

Happy Holidays Y'all.

Love you.

PORCH IS DONE! PHOTOS

2005-08-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

Photos of the renovated/repaired front porch

CLICK HERE TO SEE MY PORCH

Now I can rest easy knowing the mailman won't fall through the porch and die while delivering my mail.

Next year I plan on tearing the entire porch down and redoing it with period style brick work. I just wanted safety and cosmetics done to it until then

Asians, Americans Show Perceptual Divide

2005-08-22T23:13:00.000-07:00

AHA! JUST AS I SUSPECTED!

Asians, Americans Show Perceptual Divide

WASHINGTON (Aug. 22) - Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently. Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, according to University of Michigan researchers.

The researchers, led by Hannah-Faye Chua and Richard Nisbett, tracked the eye movements of the students - 25 European Americans and 27 native Chinese - to determine where they were looking in a picture and how long they focused on a particular area.

"They literally are seeing the world differently," said Nisbett, who believes the differences are cultural.

"Asians live in a more socially complicated world than we do," he said in a telephone interview. "They have to pay more attention to others than we do. We are individualists. We can be bulls in a china shop, they can't afford it."

The findings are reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The key thing in Chinese culture is harmony, Nisbett said, while in the West the key is finding ways to get things done, paying less attention to others.

And that, he said, goes back to the ecology and economy of times thousands of years ago.

In ancient China, farmers developed a system of irrigated agriculture, Nisbett said. Rice farmers had to get along with each other to share water and make sure no one cheated.

Western attitudes, on the other hand, developed in ancient Greece where there were more people running individual farms, raising grapes and olives, and operating like individual businessmen.

So differences in perception go back at least 2,000 years, he said.

Aristotle, for example, focused on objects. A rock sank in water because it had the property of gravity, wood floated because it had the property of floating. He would not have mentioned the water. The Chinese, though, considered all actions related to the medium in which they occurred, so they understood tides and magnetism long before the West did.

Nisbett illustrated this with a test asking Japanese and Americans to look at pictures of underwater scenes and report what they saw.

The Americans would go straight for the brightest or most rapidly moving object, he said, such as three trout swimming. The Japanese were more likely to say they saw a stream, the water was green, there were rocks on the bottom and then mention the fish.

The Japanese gave 60 percent more information on the background and twice as much about the relationship between background and foreground objects as Americans, Nisbett said.

In the latest test, the researchers tracked the eye movement of the Chinese and Americans as they looked at pictures.

The Americans looked at the object in the foreground sooner - a leopard in the jungle for example - and they looked at it longer. The Chinese had more eye movement, especially on the background and back and forth between the main object and the background, he said.

Reinforcing the belief that the differences are cultural, he said, when Asians raised in North America were studied, they were intermediate between native Asians and European-Americans, and sometimes closer to Americans in the way they viewed scenes.

Kyle R. Cave of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst commented: "These results are particularly striking because they show that these cultural differences extend to low level perceptual processes such as how we control our eyes. They suggest that the way that we see and explore the world literally depends on where we come from."

Cave said researchers in his lab have found differences in eye movement between Asians and Westerners in reading, based on differences in the styles of writing in each language.

"When you look beyond this study to all of the studies finding cultural differences, you find that people from one culture do better on some tasks, while people from other cultures do better on others. I think it would be hard to argue from these studies that one culture is generally outperforming the other cognitively," Cave said.

08/22/05 18:12 EDT

ENGKANTOS IN HARTFORD, MICHIGAN?!

2005-08-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, one of the bonuses I've repeatedly told folks about being home is that there are no dwende, no engkantos, no tikbalang, yadda, yadda here in Michigan.

I haven't even really GONE THERE and described these things to my North American friends.

Honestly, I have been too busy working on the house.

A few days ago I went to the mall with my friend, Billie.

She introduced me to a co-worker of hers, Kathy. As we were going to the parking lot, we both noted that it was a full moon.

"Uh-oh" says Billie "Kathy has to go home and check on her woods"

She THEN goes on to describe these 'people' Kathy has been seeing under the trees in the forest next to her house. They are all in white and have these lights with them. Kathy thinks some secret KKK clan rally is meeting in the wood. They are also all males.

These 'people' even went as far as throwing stuff at her one day when she went out there to see what the hell was going on. Her dogs (and she has like 10 of them) go nuts when they are out there.

However, the next day, when she goes back out there to look for footprints, etc, she can never locate any.

She thought she was going nuts.

I did a double take when Billie told me this-

"whaaat...? reapeat this PLEASE"

Though I've only typed the bare minimum of descriptions here, it sounds kinda like ENGKANTOS.

Billie is the biggest chicken skeptic on the face of this planet.

the great outdoors and other stuff

2005-08-21T20:02:00.000-07:00

Hurt my arm the other day on the stairs. Big bruises.

Spent this weekend outside...cut brush and trees in yard down. I raked, pruned, weeded...then I repaired some joists under the porch. They were rough hewn planks, likely the originals...but sadly had to be replaced with green treated lumber. Painted the lattice under the porch in a hunter green...then painted porch white with oil base porch paint!

Whew!

Now I have to wait for the entire mess to dry and do a second coat...then do the railings.

I am covered in paint splatters (or was). It ain't easy being green...

Windows, Mirrors, Souls, and the Internet

2005-08-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

People say that the eyes are the windows of the soul...on second thought, I think they might have said mirrors.

On the internet it is pretty damned hard to see people's eyes without the aid of a webcam.

I think that blogs are a more accurate and sometimes accursed doorway into a person's psyche.

I remembered just now that I have to do a reading at 2 pm.

Sigh.

My going rate is now 100.00 bucks a reading. When colleagues here told me this, I was aghast.

In Manila, I was lucky to get 20 bucks per.

I have been used to much deflation these last few months in Asia.

The cost of living back here in North America is shocking.

I can feel mercury's backward affliction loosening its grip on my grey matter. My fingers are suddenly thawed a bit.

I need to finish my renovation before I start losing focus.

I read on AOL that kickball is the new adult sport craze. I loved kickball as a kid.

I promptly went on Amazon.com and ordered a nice new bouncy red ball. I figure that I can entice some fellow players with it quite easily.

We will see how that goes...

I just have a hankering for muy physical activity, which is such a difference from the slow, sautering, ass-widening pace of my Manila metabolism.

In Manila, I detested the food and couldn't move through the heat faster than a slow slither.

In Michigan, I love the food and I can move quite fast, thank you.

I have ridden my bike, kickbiked (www.kickbike.com if you don't know what that is), rebounded, swam.

I haven't lost weight, because I've been eating like a cow.

Yesterday I did Chesse Blitzes with fresh Blueberry Sauce...from scratch.

I think I will start my official diet tomorrow and post results here.

I won't be a happy camper-I warn y'all now.

A LITTLE LATER, AFTER READING ANDY MALOUCHE'S CANCER BLAWG

Shit, shut me up now. I don't need to bitch about a little danged diet after reading his cancer diaries.

He looks damned hot for a dude with cancer.

Andy always seems to do EVERYTHING with his quiet, perverse Aquarian panache.

I miss him and the rest of my HB crowd.

I LOVE LIVER AND ONIONS

2005-08-14T16:25:00.000-07:00

Is there a comfort food more comforting than the dreaded Liver and Onions?

Properly prepared, the stuff is sublime. I prefer mine to have a crisp exterior and an interior that melts tantalizingly in one's mouth.

Anywhoo...I felt like writing again suddenly. Mercury went direct, so I figure that must be it.

I have spent the last month with a hammer in my hand. I have repaired plaster, installed floors, faux painted, yadda, yadda...I am singlehandedly renovating my upstairs.

It is nice to be home. I feel so normal again. My Manila experience was BIZARRE, to say the least. As RJ said, when one gets back to N. America, Manila melts into a type of dreamworld.

It doesn't even feel real...hell, it never really did. I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole.

Okay, I am done posting for now. Back to work.

Manual labor is sooooo soothing.