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 >.>

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.

 
]]> http://someting.i.ph/blogs/someting/?p=97 http://someting.i.ph/blogs/someting/?p=97#comments Wed, 12 May 2010 08:28:00 +0000 someting http://someting.i.ph/blogs/someting/?p=97 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.

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.) 

Created by Oatmeal

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.

 
]]> http://someting.i.ph/blogs/someting/?p=90 http://someting.i.ph/blogs/someting/?p=90#comments Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:29:00 +0000 someting http://someting.i.ph/blogs/someting/?p=90

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 :P)

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.

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. :P

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.