Sometimes, I just want to understand what it is you’re saying

Sometimes Wikipedia can go overboard with the academic language and tone. Take this entry on Cheese Sandwiches:

cheese sandwich is a basic sandwich made generally with one or more slices of any kind of cheese on any sort of bread. It may have lettuce, tomato, pickles and/or condiments such as mustard or mayonnaise added. Cheese sandwiches can be raw, or heated so that the bread toasts and the cheese melts (a dish referred to as a grilled cheese sandwich or toasted cheese).

Cheese sandwiches with added meat are generally referred to by more specific names; if ham is included, for example, the result is a “ham and cheese sandwich”.

It basically describes what a cheese sandwich is and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s an encyclopedia entry about a cheese sandwich, a detailed explanation of what exactly a cheese sandwich is is expected. If like me, you read the above paragraph with a documentary-type voice, you’d probably be rolling your eyes and wanting to kick some snobbish scholar’s posterior.

But okay, I need to chill. It’s an encylopedia article on cheese sandwiches. I should go rant about something more academic, something that makes more sense. How about my usual Wikipedia experience?

1. Open topic
2. read first few lines
3. run into an unfamiliar term/jargon/concept
4. Open topic on unfamiliar term/jargon/concept
5. repeat 2 - 4

It gets worse when the topic goes mystical. Here’s an excerpt from the entry on “Prima Materia,” a term used in Alchemy:

Thus, prima materia is the seed of the process, which takes place in the natural mind; it is the seed of enlightenment. The Crown of Creation is an overarching symbol equating with the top sphere Kether in Qabala. It triumphs over the terrible Dragon of the primal, unrefined condition, represented by the dragon or Terrible Mother. In the bottom-center is Atlas holding the earth to symbolize the material sphere of Malkuth. All is one magical movement from Kether through Malkuth.

“WTF?” is right. Unless you’re a scholar of obscure topics like the Qabala (or however it’s spelled) and Alchemy, the entry itself is just some weird gibberish that seems to have been written by some guy high on crack.

I just want to read a Wikipedia article that’s simple, easy to read, and informative. But then I probably shouldn’t go to Wikipedia that much anyway >.>

Ninjas vs Dentists

When I was a kid (heck, even until now), I wanted to be part of some dark and shadowy world. I daydreamed about being a spy, or a ninja, or an assassin, part of some secret society, proficient in all kinds of weapons, training in deadly martial arts, mastering the art of deceit, delivering world-changing information, and of course, saving the world. Kung Fu movies, manga and anime, and James Bond were the source material for my fantasies.

Yes, being a super ninja-spy-assassin was great — except for the fact that being captured was always an inevitable plot point. Capture would involve jail, interrogation, and *gulp* torture. Typical heroes would usually cry out, “I won’t give up!” or “I won’t tell you!” as they got beat up by the evil overlord’s goons. Eventually, friends would come to the rescue, or the hero goes into some sort of rage mode and kills everyone in sight. As I got older and my source material shifted from cartoons to books and actual research, these dramatic and fantastic rescues or sudden bursts of power gave way to more realistic psychological drama and torture that was beyond getting turned into a human punching bag. Ninjas were wise to commit suicide before they got captured.

Even so, I didn’t let these details get in the way of my fantasizing. One thing that Shonen manga always taught was that willpower can overcome anything. In my head, I was still the perfect super ninja-spy-assassin thingy who never gave up and never surrendered. At least, until I got a taste of extreme pain.

Yesterday, I went for a visit to what many children perceive as a hive of evil: a dental clinic.

 
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What the hell is Foresight?

There’s a giant chessboard, complete with movable chess pieces, at the mall near my house. I never really paid any attention to it whenever I went to the mall, but one day I decided to watch whatever went on there.

A match was going on between a youngish-looking guy and a middle-aged-looking guy, and since both of them still had all of their pieces, save for a pawn on both sides, I assumed they were just getting warmed up. Now I’m not good at chess, never was and never will be, and I had a hard time following the game. I’d try to predict the next set of moves in my head, but was constantly surprised when the both of them would do something I never would have thought of. Clueless as I was, I kept on watching.

Trying to figure out the game made me remember a time I played against my dad. I was only in grade school and I was playing white. To me, chess was just a game I played with my cousins and the most I could do with it was to move my pawns to form pretty formations across the board. The concept of strategy was lost on me.

I opened with some random pawn, moving it a square forward. My dad, eager to impart chess knowledge asked me why I did that. I just gave him a clueless look. What did he mean by that? Isn’t moving a pawn just for the sake of moving it sufficient reason? I mean it’s just the start of the game, chesspeople blood was yet to be spilled in a great massacre. In the world of chess, apparently, every move meant something. My dad just smirked and let my ignorance go. He proceeded to checkmate me in a few turns.

If this were an inspirational type of story, I’d be writing about more chess games with my dad, how we bonded over these games, and how he taught me the basics of life with those 32 black and white pieces. Unfortunately, I write self-centered incoherencies, and aside from that one game, I don’t have any vivid memories of playing chess against my dad. So yeah, no “Chicken Soup for the Soul” material here. The above paragraph is simply there to show how much of a chess idiot I am.

Flash forward to the present and the two guys are left only with their queens and a few pawns in play. Younger guy took his time, probably thinking of ways to pin down his opponent. Older guy almost always made a move right after younger person was done. After a few more moves, they paused for a second, then started putting all the pieces back to their starting position. People who were watching were nodding and congratulating the players, saying it was a good game. I think I was the only idiot wondering what the hell happened. I never knew if somebody won, or if it was a stalemate. By the time the players had put back all the pieces, I just felt really, really stupid.

Just that old monthly update

My quiet happy days are now coming to an end. I may be exaggerating, but all in all it would be a wretched experience. It’s a seasonal event really, and I should have been prepared for it. But preparation was never really my strong suit. So once again, I am caught with my pants down, cursing the fates, the powers that be, and whoever or whatever is running things in the cosmic upstairs.

You see, even a creature of wanton disorder like me still clings to some resemblance of a routine, or a sort of general order of things. In my current state of aimless wandering, it has been my custom to wake an hour or so before twelve noon to find that I would be the only one at home, save for my dad who would be reading the newspaper while the radio drones business news and commentaries. The one computer in the household will be mine to hog for hours, wasting my time with a random assortment of entertainment and trivial information. Other than the complete control over the computer,  I enjoyed the simple quiet of the house. It may be messy, but at least it’s not screaming with a cacophony that drowns out any possibility of hearing yourself think. I am free to traipse around the Internet, or read a book without any auditory stress. In a few days, I will lose that happy atmosphere of calm silence.

In a few days, my younger siblings’ school year will be ending. That means that instead of a faint Business Radio coming from the living room, I will now be waking up to a blaring mishmash of Pokemon reruns, tired pop music, and good old sibling rivalry screamfests. The only upside that I see to this situation is that I will now be forced to leave the house and have another go at life outside it.

For now, I still have two days’ worth of morning quiet time.

(PS The somewhat formal tone of this post would stem from the fact that I have just finished reading The Once and Future Kind, and The Book of Merlyn. Blame TH White and his style of writing.) 

I just had to post this. It was too weird.

Created by Oatmeal

I never knew 500 Days of Summer could be such a hurtful movie

So I thought it was going to be just another weekend with my best buds from high school. I thought Gene, the twins Gian and Derrick, and I would just be playing video games, talking about anime and movies, and doing general geek stuff . I was wrong.

You see, whenever we have these get-togethers, the guys usually ask me to bring a movie with me just in case we got sick of playing video games and stuff. Well, little old me living in a house dominated by my sisters would usually bring a Rom-Com since those were the only DVDs in the house. It’s usually no big deal since they’d all just focus on the pretty girl in the movie and applaud when the movie gets to its formulaic happy ending. Given that, I thought it was no big deal that I brought 500 Days of Summer with me. I already watched it, found it really nice, and totally liked the soundtrack. I thought my friends would like it too. They did, in a way. What I didn’t count on was how much they would be affected by the movie.

I guess the almost-shouting match Gene and I had when the movie started should have tipped me off. He’d already watched the movie and was shouting, “Bitch!” at Zooey Deschanel when she appeared onscreen. Of course I replied with the very intelligent, “She’s not a bitch!” To which the reply was, “Yes she is!” The twins just looked at us in a weird way. So before we could slip out some spoilers, we decided to just let them watch the movie and decide for themselves.

I had the twins on my side at first. It was pretty clear that Summer wasn’t looking for something serious and that Tom was lovesick a little bit too much.  But by the end of the movie, when the end didn’t go as they expected, I was the only one defending Summer Finn from Tom Hansen’s army of heartbroken souls. I did not figure in the fact that all three of my highschool friends have, someway or another, been dumped and rejected by the girl of their hormonally-charged dreams, and they saw in Summer everything there was about the girl.

Pretty soon, the air was filled with a bitter aura with everyone remisniscing about their respective psychobitches. I hate you Jean was on everyone’s minds and now I think my friends really believe that I have an evil, manipulative, psycho persona.

Not bad for Valentine’s Eve.

The day I discovered Gyorgy Ligeti, also: abuse of the "embed" function

So, I was going about my regular routine, dicking around the internet and hanging out in Roleplayerguild’s IRC channel, when someone posts a link to Ligeti’s Requiem. I’m one of those classical music buffs that  can only name a handful of composers they’re familiar with, so it wasn’t really surprising for me not to know of Gyorgy Ligeti. I did a little trip to Wikipedia and skimmed through his article. It turns out that he’s quite a famous contemporary composer and his work has been popularized in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. His works… are certainly not that of the norm you’d expect when you say “classical.”

 
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Er… right.

Children’s Book Movie Fanboy-ing

One of the movies I’m really excited to see is Where the Wild Things Are. I saw the trailer maybe a few months ago and got really nostalgic about the book and everything. I used to see it at my old grade school library and I read it a few times. Cute story, but I kinda forgot it through the years. Actually even forgot about the book.

And then this trailer pops up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NOkQ4dYVaM
(the video didn’t allow embedding, and I’m too lazy to look for another one )

And everything comes flooding back into my head.

So of course, the question is: how the fudge do they turn a children’s storybook into a full-length film? All I remembered from the book was that a kid goes to an island full of monsters, becomes their king, misses home, and goes back. I mean not really much material for a movie. But then I just shrugged it off. The monsters in the trailer looked good and looked like how I remembered them. I’ll just hope I really enjoy the movie.

Another effect of seeing that trailer was that I developed a semi-obsession  on finding and reading the book again. I still don’t know how to buy stuff online, and anyway it would no doubt be expensive. I don’t think the local bookstores would have it anymore, and if they did I wouldn’t really be able to afford them. The only hope I had of finding it was to raid second-hand bookstores. This was semi-obsession we’re talking about so I only browsed through stacks when it crossed my mind. Second-hand bookstores being what they were, it was a hit-and-miss thing.

And today was my lucky day.

So I finally have a copy of the book (and also got to read The Velveteen Rabbit in the store, but I only had enough money for Maurice Sendak’s book so I couldn’t bring both of them home) , read it, enjoyed the art, found the story cute, and now find myself really wondering

HOW THE FUDGE WOULD THEY TURN A SIMPLE CHILDREN’S BOOK THAT’S MORE OR LESS 10 SENTENCES LONG INTO A FULL-LENGTH MOVIE?

It’s kinda stupid, but it’s kind of bothering me.

I’d totally slap myself silly if I ever watch the movie and go,  “That’s not what happened in the book!” But I’ve *sigh* been that way ever since I saw Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It even happened in The Time Traveller’s Wife. But come on, this is a really short children’s book we’re talking about, so yeah complaining about that would be really pathetic and stuff.

Long Overdue Birdyday Post

 I. Am. 21. Fucking. Years. Old.

God damn, I’m 21. Yes, I revived my blog and revamped the whole theme just to say that I’m legal in almost the whole world. What follows will be a self-conscious stream of rambling that the reader can probably be better off not reading. Don’t mind me, that’s just the low self-esteem talking. What you do in your spare time is your business, not mine. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just continue on with this piece of literary masturbation. (Ooh, masturbation. We’re being edgy and shocking today!)

There was no booze when I celebrated the 21st time my ass revolved around the Sun last August 19. Might be something good, might be something bad. So far, the celebrations have been quite wholesome, not even barely going over PG13. A movie, food, and a whole lot of Final Fantasy: Dissidia. Yeah, me and my buds, we’re quite the party animals. We plan to experiment with dangerous substances like mentos and diet coke one day.

So anyway, I’m 21. Going on about responsibility and whining and stuff is too much like last year’s post so I’ll skip it. And go right ahead to whatever it was that I was supposed to say.

Nothing much has changed. I’m still the same slacker I was a year ago. I have a little work experience now from having tutored Korean kids. I’ve imbibed alcohol but haven’t gotten wasted yet (I kinda want to have my own “What the hell did I do?” story. My blog… is certainly quite active. I’m sort of doing most of my writing in Roleplayerguild.com now. And I now have some stuff in my DeviantArt gallery.

Of course, the main goal right now would be to get another job to take care of financial needs and luxuries.  My earphones just conked out on me and now I’m stuck with cheap ones with bearable, but not great sound quality. *sigh* Why do I have to depend on money for my happiness?

There’s also the continued betterment of skills through practice and stuff. I hate that it takes me hours to write or draw. All my friends are better than me at stuff and I think they just tell me I do fine when I show them my “skills.” Or that’s just me being paranoid again. I have friends. Real friends. Don’t I? DON’T I? SOMEBODY PLEASE LOVE ME!

Speaking of love, don’t expect any from me. I am a robot without emotions and can only project a facsimile of affection . Yes, I’m still a clueless piece of  ass when it comes to the finer, mindfucking, life-derailing, romantic points of life.

Anyway, I guess that’s it for the self-serving and useless self-assessment. I’d post something that’s remotely entertaining or educational sometime later.

http://roleplayerguild.com/members/claude/
that’s my Roleplayerguild profile. Not that it matters to anyone.

http://stickting.deviantart.com
and that’s my DA page. You know I think I just made this enyry to whore that thing. Oh well.

Once in a while, I get riled up enough to do one of these

In a purple dress, surrounded by hundreds of yespeople, she spoke of achievements. She spoke while using pictures, graphs, videos, and even actual people to support her claims of a strong economy and a strong government. She spoke to her critics, indirectly criticizing them whenever she had to say something about her so-called flaws. She spoke to the masses, speaking as if she knew of their sacrifices and their pain, praising them and assuring them that everything will be all right thanks to them. She had to stop speaking every so often though, whenever her yespeople horde erupted into applause every time she paused for breath. She ended her speech amidst a thunderous round of applause. She must have felt very proud and accomplished to give a condescending “Ha!” to her critics as her last State of the Nation Address.

In years-old house clothes, surrounded by clutter, I listened to her speak. I listened as her pictures and videos made me roll my eyes, as her graphs had me think of how she juggled numbers this time, and as her guests made me snort and think of the fallacy of composition. I listened to her rail against her critics as I imagined monkeys flinging shit at each other. I listened to her praise the working masses, thinking of how she was in all likelihood more clueless than I am about what they really have to deal with. I watched her bask in the ‘warmth’ of her yespeople horde’s applause and wondered what would have happened if she said her speech outside, in the streets, facing the actual public. I stopped watching and listening as soon as she stopped talking. I sighed in relief, happy that I have at least done a little homework, and that I was now free to further disappoint a few of my professors by wasting time on the Internet rather than by joining them march in the streets.

This is one seemingly apathetic sheep ending his useless blather about a fuhrer and how she yakked about stuff for an hour.

A recounting of things already past up to the age of seven years

Ugh. My internet’s being stupid. It seems I can’t upload large amounts of text right now. That makes it difficult for me to post on Roleplayerguild. Argh. Anyway, I’m still taking that risk right now by at least trying to get a start on my writing assignment for tomorrow, an autobiography with a little graph-thingy about the highs and lows of your life so far.

I wish I still had time for the dramatics and stuff, but being pressed for time, I’m just going to have to brainfart this thing.

–

The following will contain a wall of text created between 11:30 pm and 2:30 am. It will be full of typos, bad sentence structure, possible grammar errors, intimate details, and general nonsense. You have been warned.

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Writing Classes, Jeepneys, and some useless blather

We were supposed to ride a jeepney in our Writing Workshop class. It was supposed to be an exercise in observation– a very important tool in a writer’s arsenal. The jeepney would be a wonderful place to practice since, as my prof said, “It’s a microcosm of Philippine Society.” The Jeepney, unlike the Bus or the FX vans, has its passengers facing each other. One can see everything and everyone in the jeep, and one is always in earshot of whatever word is said. In this kind of situation, we would have to keep our eyes and ears open, peering into the lives of our co-passengers, discreetly listening in on conversations, and mentally jotting down notes to be used in whatever creative exploit we might try.

The riding a jeepney part? Easy, I ride a jeep almost everyday.  The observing part? … We’re going to have a problem with that.

As I’ve said, I ride a jeepney almost everyday. It’s not my favorite mode of transport, but it’s the only public utility vehicle that has a route that passes by my neighborhood. When using a jeep, I’d have to brave thick clouds of vehicle exhaust, stifling temperatures, hellish traffic jams, and great amounts of boredom. My sanity survives the commute through my trusty mp3 player and my book-of-the-moment (though I wouldn’t really put much trust in the book. You know, reading in moving vehicles and everything.). Basically I survive commutes by blocking my Audio-Visual senses. I’d go mad if I don’t get my anti-social fix. But for the sake of observation, I am asked to abandon it.

So did I?

Nope.

But I still tried observing and everything, and what I saw didn’t really give me material to write the next Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel. What I observed in my commutes were people, just like me, who were in the jeep, bored out of their minds, looking out the window to at least entertain their eyes with scenes they’ve scene a bajillion time before. They were people, just like me, who wanted to be where they were going, wishing that there was a cheaper and better way of travel, one that didn’t involve smog, traffic jams, and uncomfortably hot temperatures.

I don’t know, but maybe I should have done a little more observing. But I’ll just use the “Baby Steps” excuse. Let me take this bit by little bit, I’ll eventually get the hang of it. What’s important right now is how I’m going to bullshit this in class.

Pajama, Pajamaa!

Today was a YouTube day.

Due to some difficulties with the house keys, I got stuck at home, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Physically at least. There was Phillip K. Dick’s world of paranoid humans and androids (just got me a copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep aka Blade Runner), the world of Persona 4 (I’m at the part where we take down Mitsuo Kubo), and of course the Internet. Ah, the wonders of the Information Superhighway.

Anyway,  there was nothing new on Roleplayerguild. None of the threads I’m in had updates. If I didn’t get on YouTube, I’d have spent the whole day spamming in the Off-topic forums, refereshing endlessly to catch any updates. And if you’re not really getting what I’m saying, I’d have to put up a new blog entry about what I did the whole summer.

So there. Bored. Frustrated. Bored. I was halfway through Blade Runner, reading through the part where the main character gets all paranoid and starts questioning his sanity, when I decide to put the book down and check the Internets. I eventually land on YouTube and decide to do something I’ve been putting off for the last couple of weeks: Watching “Little Nemo, Adventures in Slumberland.”

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Political Science has ruined me

My little brother (12) and little sister (14) were fighting again. I have no idea what started it, I have no interest in knowing how it started, I usually adopt the ignore-it-until-it’s-too-annoying-then-beat-both-of-them-up style of big brothering. There they were shouting, shoving, slapping, and generally contributing to the chi disruption of the whole place, and I thought to myself, are there rules for these fights? My little sibs generally follow a pattern in their fights and it would be interesting if their little fights are just a representation of a universal unwritten code for kid fights. There would be unspoken rules like:

-> Physically harmful contact from any party, whether intended or not, is justified reason for declaring a fight.

->The first phase of the fight will be on verbal territory and will compose 70% of the whole fight. Verbal attacks including, but not limited to, ad hominem insults, recountings of past embarrassments, grossly exaggerated parodies of the actions of the opposing party, taking past events out-of-context with intent to ridicule, and statements that questions the heterosexuality of the opposing party are acceptable. With regards to the relaying of past experiences, the date and recency of said experience is irrelevant.

->The second phase of the fight begins when during the first phase, a party does not retaliate with a verbal assault but with a physical one. All parties can now deliver physical blows to each other. Verbal attacks can still be performed along with physical attacks. Physical actions will be limited to slaps, shoves, pinches, and hair-pulling. The neck, the eyes, the gut, and the genitals are zones of no physical contact.

->A fight ends when one of the following events happens:

•  An adult breaks up the fight
• One party declares their opponents are stupid and leaves the fight
• When one or all parties are emotionally unable to continue fighting
• When one or all parties are physically unable to continue fighting

-> A party is declared the “Winner” when:

• The party successfully pleads their case in front of an adult, resulting in the punishment of the opposing parties, while escaping punishment or receiving a lighter punishment.
• The party is successful in emotionally incapacitating the opposing party
• The opposing party “goes too far”  by performing a physical action on a party which makes movement, breathing, or sight difficult for the said party.
• A party has given better verbal attacks, dealt the verbal attack that provoked the opposing party into entering the second phase, and successfully stood their ground in the second phase.

-> A draw happens when:

• All parties receive the same punishment from an adult
• A party leaves the fight, leaving both parties thinking they were better than the other
•  The party that opened the second phase demonstrates superior physical capabilites in it. (The party that opens the second phase is declared pikon and is no longer eligible for being declared a winner.)

*reads the above*

That does it. I have too much “free” time on my hands. Now to get to real work.

 *sigh*

Bad International Politics Paper Made By Yours Truly

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All-nighters are hell

I was literally up all night last March 2, 2009. I hated the experience. The only reason I didn’t feel a deeper negative emotion to the whole experience was that I wasn’t the only one suffering. Doms, Arvin, Doms’s poor old computer, and I worked through our energy stores to complete a crappy documentary that was due on February 27, 2009, friday of the week before. The documentary was fortunate enough to be a group project, it would never have seen the light of day had it been left up to me to create it - especially with the deadline over.

Anyway, trying to figure out how to use video editing programs, throwing away almost 80% of the whole footage of the interviews taken, panicking when the computer couldn’t read the movie clips, converting the unreadable files, waiting for hours for the files to be converted, making scripts for the documentary while files were being converted, narrating the scripts into a voice recorder, narrating to the voice recorder again after stuttering, or getting tongue-tied, or suddenly forgetting how to read, arranging video clips in a semi-sensible order when they were finally converted, having creative bursts of ideas on how we would present the whole thing, being frustrated at the difficulty of implementing idea gained from creative burst, still being up when the rest of the household was getting on with their respective going-to-school routines, staring at a computer screen for hours (working), going to school without taking a bath or at least brushing one’s teeth (EEW), missing class, taking an exam with a stressed and frazzled mind, feeling very grouchy and weak all day, made me remember why I love loafing around so much.

After the whole dreadful experience I was looking forward to dropping my stressed carcass on my dusty, used clothing cluttered, unmade, bed and sleeping the whole day, but I still had an afternoon class to go to and a tutoring job to do. I went home to get at least an hour’s worth of sleep to get some energy to at least survive the rest of the day. I survived. But then my stupid body had a wicked surprise for me when I could finally get some much-needed sleep. It’s 9:30, earlier than my usual bedtime, I’m super tired, my whole body was weary, but I could. Not. Get. To. Sleep. I was lying in bed for about an hour and I wasn’t automatically going to slumberland. There was something wrong. My mind was screaming for Hypnos and Morpheus to take me to their wonderful land but the damn gods of sleep and dreaming wouldn’t let me. It was a frustrating experience. It must have been the weird grain tea I had at the koreans’ house, or the two pieces of chicken I had for dinner, or the one-hour nap I had earlier, or some weird masochistic impulse, but I could not get to sleep. I was curled up on my bed, feeling sorry and angry at myself, when I finally had an idea. I nuked a glass of milk in our microwave, had a happy moment of relaxation, and went to bed. I expected a one-shot-kill effect but I was still twisting around the bed, looking for just the right position, thinking that my milk idea was crap. The next thing I knew, it was noon the next day. Happiness.

School gets in the way of fun; Wasted time, yet again

Right now, I’m trying to console myself for not going to the UP Diliman Fair. It was one of those rare cosmic occurences where you have something very fun like a concert at UP Diliman (with the added bonus of getting a chance to go backstage through some friendly connections) and something very serious like a midterm exam in on of your majors the next day. I could’ve probably avoided this by being all good student-y and time management-y but really now (*rolls eyes*). Anyway circumstances have come together and I am now sitting in a computer shop, writing this crappy entry, not doing any of the two things I’ve planned. But then this could be all right as well. I could at least get some sleep and know I’ll be performing badly at my test tomorrow and not blame the whole lack-of-sleep-mental-block thing.

Ahkk. I should have joined them in UP Diliman

Topics, Pride, Psychological S&M performed on one’s own psyche

This is a post that started with a draft of a draft that seemed to make sense at the time but descends to mindless drivel reflecting the lack of the necessary creative juices in this person’s head.

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Ever wonder about stuff?

I’ve always been curious about the qwerty keyboard. I kept on thinking about who the hell would think of putting the letters of the english alphabet in such an order and why that person would do so. What exactly did that person have in mind? I needed answers so I brought my hands together, cleared my mind, and asked an entity whose knowledge would provide me with insight; I typed “qwerty keyboard” into the Google search engine. Almighty Google led me to a repository of reliable information, Wikipedia from which I asked the same query.

From what I read and understood from Wikipedia, the makers of the qwerty keyboard didn’t have ergonomics, general comfort, and practical placement of keys in mind, basically everything I thought they had in mind. Apparently, early typewriters had a nasty habit of having jammed keys. The qwerty layout did the trick, and so did better typewriter designs that came years later. I guess the selling point of the qwerty layout was that the typewriter makers found it cute that you could spell “typewriter” using only one string of keys, which is pretty nifty and cute. Anyway since qwerty was the first to be mass-produced, it enjoyed the privelege of being used by almost everybody.

Decades later, some people decided they didn’t like the qwerty layout. They said it wasn’t the most practical of layouts. Qwerty preferred the right hand over the left since most of the commonly used letters were on the side of the left hand. Those people wanted to start a revolution and they introduced the dvorak keyboard layout. They said it provides better comfort than the qwerty, that it was more practical since the most frequently used letters were placed on the home line (the asdf-jkl; line in the qwerty layout), and it wouldn’t stress your hands that much. A grand idea really.

Too bad it didn’t revolutionize the world; almost all of us are still using qwerty, heck I use qwerty, everybody in the world is stuck with qwerty. But the dvorak cause isn’t totally lost since one can toggle the languages part of the computer to recognize the dvorak layout. Learning to type with the dvorak layout seems like a nice thing to do on days of mind-numbing boredom; that also goes for learning lojban.

I guess I’ll end this with a (pretentious) rhetorical question (am I using that right?) followed by a little exposition (am I using that right?). Isn’t it sad that things could be (theoretically) better by changing a few things we’d rather not since we’re already used to the old thing? I mean we can probably end a few keyboard-related injuries by learning a new layout and stuff. We’d probably type faster and maybe blog better (or worse). Anyway, I’m running out of ideas, and I’ve wasted enough of your time.

(I have got to work on how to end stuff.)