Drunken Scuffle

Some 400 years ago, an enterprising Spanish fleet sailed off to sea in a culinary expedition in search of imported herbs for the Spanish connoisseur. Halfway around the globe, this fleet unfortunately docked into these islands I now call home, which were then ran by scattered tribes of aboriginal black people. To the amusement of the spaniards, these primitive tribes ran after wild pigs with sticks for food, and dried leaves for their sparse clothing while the rest of the world were already building grand palaces, great walls, volumes of refined literature, including these visitors who were only there to extend their menu. Being the potential suckers that they were, the Spanish herb hunters took this advantage and gave the primitive tribesmen an introductory gift to Christianity: a decorative statuette of the boy jesus. The tribesmen accepted the gift and danced to celebrate their newfound religion, as what probably has been written by the scribe on board the Spanish fleet, since he was the only one authorized of recording history at that time. On the other hand, the tribesmen were probably smart enough to dance and not to pick a fight with their sticks against the Spaniard's imposition.

Centuries later, this encounter inspired a religious mardi gras contest that is annually held in our city every third Sunday of January. Different teams paint themselves black and dress up like the aborigines and reenact the whole encounter, highlighting the part where they were dancing to the statuette of the boy jesus. This celebration is loosely translated from our local dialect into English as “scuffle”, or those kinds of fracas kids do for fun.

And through the years, the competition amongst the teams has promoted glamour and color in the costume, far from the original indigenous jungle gear worn by the tribesmen, including deviating from the whole encounter which now includes drag queens in las vegas outfits, giant clamshells and all sorts of strange objects for whatever the hell they meant. The traffic downtown is closed to pave way for the mardi gras parade, and the event attracts a large crowd for the weekend. The streets would look like those spring break parties in the U.S. with all the street dancing and excessive alcohol consumption, except in those western spring breaks, you see decent people get wasted, here you see wasted people get even more wasted. These wasted people are not even here for the religious significance of the occasion but for the plethora of alcohol on the streets, and in fact is the only produce in demand for the weekend and has since become the other implied reason of the celebration. And considering the volume of alcohol being consumed on that day alone, more than half of that amount has to be released through the bladder or discarded orally out on the streets, making the morning after a reminiscent of a radioactive spill.

I do drink a lot, but it is not quite safe to have your beers out on the streets, with wasted drunkards abound shouting praises to the boy jesus while engaging in scuffles in which this feast is named after.

There’s this Christian story about Christ’s first godly tour de force, where he turned water into wine in a wedding in short of alcohol, and by creating more alcohol I suppose he rhetorically did not imply to drink moderately. And the people in our celebration took it seriously. Sometimes I feel they should quote this miracle to justify the excessive alcohol in a religious celebration

Mobile MP3

I got myself an MP3 player yesterday, it is about 3 inches long, about an inch wide and looked like them stopwatches people use to time athletes, and it wasn’t too expensive because it only had 128mb for its memory. Most techno-enthusiasts would find a 128mb too measly a memory for a gadget, that much space can only hold about 30 mp3 songs. But I don’t mind having 30 songs in my pocket, that playlist could go on playing for more than an hour, and that’s enough time spent listening to music when Im stuck in traffic in a cab or when Im home alone drinking.

I don’t see the practicality of having a player that can store up to 5000 songs: Imagine going to a restaurant where the waiter presents to you a menu with 5000 dishes to choose for the main course, its either you cant figure out what to eat or you wont find that particular dish you want to eat. And besides a whooping stack of 5000 songs is enough supply of distraction if I had ideas about hibernating under our basement for two weeks, or if all the music in the world has evolved into rock (similar to the earthly mineral devoid of value) should I then consider the thought of saving refined music by the thousands.

Im in manila and I’ll have to wait til Saturday when I get home to my pc to try out this MP3 player. I don’t have much to do for the rest of the day, except meet up with edgar tonight at macapagal ave for a couple of beers.

Nightstalkers

Compared to its previous movie installment, Blade Trinity had a very cliche plot: Blade gets framed up, then he teams up witht the Nightstalkers and beats the crap out of the movie's boss vampire.

The movie had a lot of fighting, a lot of senseless fighting. It looked almost like a martial arts exhibition dancing to deafening rock music (which I dont appreciate listening to).

And they yell the F word so much, F this and F that and F everything.

Did you know:
Blade, Hannibal King and Abigail Whistler made up the three Nighstalkers in the the movie who were up against the boss vampire Drake. But way back 1992 when the nightstlakers first appeared in comic books, the original nightstalkers lineup was Blade, Hannibal King and Drake.





(from my marvel series 3 card collection, circa 1992)

Tilting Toadstools

I caught my brother in a stalemate yesterday trying to fix a broken shelf.

The shelf had a couple layers of glass being held by girders right below it, and these girders then had braces that supported the weight of the glass. My brother was trying to reattach one of the braces to the girders originally held by a screw, which probably took off to see the rest of the world than stay "screwed" under the shelf.

We resorted to using a rivet for snapping back the brace but unfortunately the only rivet he found in the toolbox looked like a tilting toadstool. He decided to buy a pack of rivets at the hardware store around the block, we only needed a single piece of rivet but some spares might come in handy, since chances are I might accidentally be snapping more tilted toadstools out of them.

Soon my brother came back with a pack of rivets but only to find out that those he bought were too big to fit in the girder’s socket. I went to the hardware store myself to buy the rivets myself, I thought of exchanging the bigger rivets my brother bought earlier for something smaller, but then they wouldn’t probably be too happy about it since we now don't have the rivet's pack in one piece.

Lining up to the clerk I again unfortunately saw the procedure in exchanging goods and learned that they only need the receipt. Going back home to get our receipt, Hell I found out that my brother already tore it down to pieces which left us scavenging the trash basket and working out this amazing jigsaw puzzle with adhesive tape. The name of the hardware store was missing in the puzzle but hell they probably wouldn’t care about it anyway, but then they had to check the bigger rivets we were replacing if they all still appear in good shape and not like tilting toadstools.

Finally getting back home with the smaller rivets, and in a fit of riddance, I snapped them permanently and hell I found out I snapped the goddam braces to the girders upside down.

2005