The King of Israel

I was stuck reading from this book the king of israel over at my desk last night, its about some college guy who went up to see his jewish uncle in new york who was a wrestler that went by the name of the king of israel, and when you thought the namesake of the title was of biblical significance. The story is really good and I could have gone reading it for the rest of the night but hell its just a short story from a compilation I got from a book sale last tuesday, makes me wish the author could have spent a couple more brain cells writing on it to make it a little longer.

It took me about thirty minutes to finish the whole thing off but I could have gone faster if not for these ants that were crawling across my desk, I didn’t have anything sweet up my desk but these ants were making their way to my table lamp, they kept going inside for something through this hole where the cord to the plug goes in the lamp. They were quite a nuisance because when I was reading, the lamp was at my left and the ants were coming from my right and their goddam trail just distorts the direction from where I was reading because I read from left to right and then some ant would crawl from my right to left to the lamp and my eyes would end up following the stupid ant instead of the words, especially when they’re carrying something and they would catch my attention more, I would end up pressing them flat with my fingers to stop them from disturbing me, I had to shake the lamp once in a while too to drive them away because they might ruin it by stuffing scraps inside and its hard to get a good working lamp these days.

Anyway I was to see some tailor this afternoon because Im having this suit done and the tailor needed to get some measurements from me. When I got out of the office around three in the afternoon. the freak weather was depressingly gloomy unlike this morning when it was burning like hell, the sky was full of rainclouds that afternoon that you could feel it was going to pour any minute.

The tailor I met for my suit was those kinds of men who think they’re women on the inside, because people believe that these kinds of men that are into making fancy clothing are always good at it, must have something to do with their state of confusion. The tailor did a good job with his house though, it reminds me of what a mess my home is. When I got inside his personal haberdashery, the tailor was taking measurements from a group of kids with their parents, it took him about five minutes to finish with one kid but it took him another fifteen minutes to sweet talk to that kid’s parents about how fabulous life is. He talked too much, he talked just about anything he could think of, including about this miscarriage one of the kids mother had before, because I think that’s something he’ll never have in this lifetime no matter how much woman he think he is.

There was another fat boy inside the room whom the tailor adored from everything from hair to the flashy gadgets around his belt, except for the length of his belt though. He said that he love the fat boy’s hair and he asked who did it, and fat boy over there then said something like stello and the tailor said “oh stello” like he was pretending to know the guy to keep him at the helm of the conversation. Hell they then turned to me probably hoping to know who does my hair too, and really I don’t know the guy around the block at home who shaves my hair for thirty bucks so I got ahead of them and said that I usually have my hair almost bald, the tailor then told me not to do so because I would look like some convict on parole.

Show me a human being who doesn’t pretend and I’ll show you a dead human being. Everybody pretends

the king of israel

Reading Mood

Me and imer planned to go get some beers last friday night and he told me that I should check out this new place he discovered in makati avenue that he now frequents, he could have just said he found a new place to hang out but instead he said discovered and from how he used the word, he must have found something unusually great there. We were to meet at seattle’s best at nine because another friend gb was also joining us on beers, gb didn’t drink much before when I first met him in school but now I swear his drinking habit is catching up with mine and imer’s.

The place both of them were talking about isn’t far from where we met but we took a cab, both of them seem to know the direction to the place better by talking to the cab driver than just walking and it felt it was going to rain anyway if we walked. I forgot the name of the place but I remember it was two words paired up to mean something, the place is small say that it could hold like 50 guests inside but it was great, they had a band inside and beer is only at thirty buck something and you couldn’t get beers at that price especially around makati avenue.

I felt we were like high school students at the place drinking beer if you heard us because for the rest of the night all that we talked about was comic book superheroes, this was because the movie all three of us last saw was the iron man movie, gb in particular and he even told us he had to line up on the first day it came out in the theaters and he’s upset too that he missed the hidden nick fury scene after the credits, he’s still even reading the comic books right now. Gb asked us what were we reading ourselves and imer pulled out this book alastor he got from a sale, I told them I was reading this book jason lent me the tipping point by malcom somebody, I had to remind gb of jason because he met him once when he went to iloilo but anyway imer asked if my book was any good because he heard about it too, I told him it felt like you were listening to college professor lecture in class.

Actually I gave this one some thought because I didn’t know how to answer anybody if a book was any good, save catcher in the rye. I have not been myself the past few months and maybe if one book was any good, it didn’t felt good for me right now maybe because I am depressed or I couldn’t even feel like reading at all. Jason’s book was with me for almost a month already and I haven’t even reached the hundredth page though I could remember some parts of the book were interesting.

I continued reading it again when I took my flight back home last sunday, I was on my way to the airport even before seven in the morning and hell the airport was crowded because there is always a first morning flight to every part of the country from manila. It wasn’t the line to the check in counter that pissed me off but it was the line to the airport donut shop because I hadn’t had breakfast yet and I ended up lining in the other expensive french bakeshop instead where one goddam vegetarian french bread and coffee costed me two hundred bucks. Anyway I read the book at the airport and then it was beginning to sound interesting again, but I only lasted for about thirty minutes on it because my flight is up soon and I couldn’t focus my eyes on the book anymore because I had to check out the lines if one of those were to my flight, only to find out that my goddam flight kept on delaying til midday.

I had a hell lot of time more to spare at the airport but then I just lost my reading mood.