Collie Buddz - Come Around

So, in the fine tradition of other white reggae artists, I present to you Collie Buddz. Me mate linked me to the vid and I immediately thought of MC Snow. Appearances aside, this is still a solid track. I've tried pretty hard to hate it, it just isn't working out. Oh well. This hate is gonna have to wait for another day.

Tales of fish and fightin'

After dinner tonight, me pops, meself, and the dude renting out a room in our house were chilling about the table and story time started up again. The conversation lasted two hours and was all over the place but it was mainly about "home."

I especially enjoyed these two bits:

"During the rainy season we always ate fish. Why? Because when it rained the fields would flood and there would be fish everywhere. It was a matter of sticking your hands in the water and picking them up. We had a bunch of different ways of catching fish. Your uncle and I would make big footprints in the mud by stepping and twisting our feet around. When the water drained away, there would be a fish in every footprint you made. Another way was to cut a thick piece of bamboo into about the length of your forearm. You just plunge it into the water randomly and when you felt the bamboo shake you would stick your hand into the bamboo and pull out the fish. One time my dad was unlucky enough to catch a very angry snake this way.

My favorite memory was from when I was really little, maybe four or five. I asked my dad, 'Pa, why are there so many fish in the fields but only when it rains?'

'That's because it rains fish during this time of the year.'

The next day it rained, I remember getting on top of the house with a bucket and staring into the sky for an hour while all my brothers laughed at me. My father took me down and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was trying to catch fish like him and he put his hand on my head and laughed. He worked hard for us and it was always great to see him smile, however rarely."

This one's a bit more trivial:

"Your Uncle Badong was the most expensive student out of all of us. The reason was he was always getting in fights. Him and Entie would spend the entire day playing basketball and they'd always start fights. He would take a grudge on the court into your own house. Seriously, he'd bust into some guys house and raise hell like no other. And the thing was, he never tired of fighting because he knew that if he got in a fight, we all did. There was no way to lose. Eventually, when he was going to college in Manila, he was in jail like every other day. I ended up enrolling him in martial arts classes out of my own paycheck just so he had somewhere to release stress."

That's some gangsta ass shit.

Feel Me Flow

Naughty by Nature - Feel Me Flow

I can't get this song of my head. The lyrics are just fun, without being overly ridiculous -- *cough* southern hiphop *cough* -- I'd post the video here but the person who posted it up disabled embedding. I played around with the code a bit but I couldn't get it to work.

Here's a link to the vid, though.

Enjoy.

The Drive Home

The drive home with my dad was, as usual, full of stories and randomness. We always end up on the subject of "home" which, for him, means the Philippines. I told him about how everyone back home told me stories about my mother (R.I.P. Ina ko) that revealed a side of her that rarely exposed itself in America, where she was just another woman.

They say she was a natural born leader with a loud, powerful voice and that she always said the right words. She could sway a group of people in seconds. She was never alone, people followed her just to hear her talk. Classmates hoped her knowledge rubbed off on them. The people there that remember her were only children or teens when she left, and they say everyone wanted to be like her. Dad affirmed it all, adding that a lot of them wouldn't admit it but she also fed most of them as children on days when parents came home empty-handed.

My father worked as a government engineer in her town, and he formed a little gang of his own. Many of the older teens latched on to him, because he bought them drinks and food, and was also a strong personality. My pops had a private car and a driver and was stacking mad paper working for the government. When he went places with my mom, he preferred to hire two jeepneys, because even though they were on dates, the kids still followed them around. He made a deal with them that he would provide them transportation to the beach, as long as they brought a little of their own food. Weekends would see a convoy of jeepneys full of poor children bearing stolen coconuts, bananas, mangoes, avocados, and various other produce.

We spoke about "home" for quite a while and then somehow segwayed into life in America. As I've become older he's become a lot more reflective about his first years in the States. This time he told me how much he regretted never being able to use his degree here in the US. At the time he was so focused on keeping the family together that taking odd jobs making porches and decks for rich white people wasn't even a problem. Once he got over how wasteful Americans were, he was just happy to be here. Now, he says, he can't stand his job anymore. He has a new boss every year, college graduates with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering that doesn't know shit about the industry. They constantly ask questions when they need help but then act cold towards their employees when they don't need them. They take forever to address problems while he McGuyvers solutions in seconds.

Despite the regrets, though, he says he's glad he was able to help raise all his nieces and nephews and that he wouldn't trade his time here for a stable, high-paying job under a corrupt government. He wouldn't trade learning to change diapers three at a time on the rare occasions he was off. He claims he'd never trade having to eat the dozens of eggs that my Ate refused to eat because the yolks popped. He says he'd never trade cooking ramen noodles at two in the morning for my Kuya when he had the flu. He says he'd never trade having to wear pink clothes for a week when my cousins mixed up the colored clothes with the whites when they were supposed to be babysitting me. He'd never trade the looks on all of my cousin's faces when he was the first one who let them drive his car, even though they only had just gotten their permits. He says the countless high school, college, and grad school graduations of his blood are payment enough for any of the frustration at work, from racism, bigotry, and ignorance that he's had to endure.

Now he's starting to talk about going back to school. Maybe becoming a professor in the Philippines when he retires. It fits; he's always learning. I bring my old textbooks home and he reads them while taking a shit. We spend nights together on the couch with one leg up. eating rice with our hands while watching the Discovery Channel. We don't discuss the scores of "the game" in the car, we talk about politics, and the economic situation in the third world. I'd always loved my dad, mostly because I have to, but the last two years have given me a respect for him that is unequaled. He is, by far, the most amazing man I've ever met and I just can't believe it's taken me so long to discover the treasure I've lived with my whole life.

Ones and Twos

So I'm sitting here right before my exam, chugging an energy drink and not thinking about the exam at all. I was thinking about all the things that I wish I could do. The foremost among them are the four elements of hip hop. I have a passion for them now that's hardly matched by many other thing in my life right now but somehow I feel like it's too late to do anything about it. For instance, I sincerely wish I had learned to spin:






Cutting skills aside, Kid Koala has an amazing ability to visualize phrases in music. Honestly, how many times do you think he's listened to every set of vinyl in his library? To be able to just sit down and jam to funk and soul records all day just to find the perfect breaks and then become so absorbed into the music that eventually learn the ability to find the music within the music. I'd fucking kill. And, hell, I'd love to start learning now but then I watch vids like this:





Oh, Asian kids. Is there anything that you can't make grown ass people feel more inadequate in?

TheRebel

http://www.therebelmovie.com/

I fucking called it. The historical epic genre is taking over Asia. Now Vietnam is in the mix, man. When is it the PI's turn?

Also, take note of the use of scissor kicks in the trailer. This is a signature move of Vovinam Viet Vo Dao, the premier Viet martial art. This, if I'm not mistaken, will be the first feature film released in the United States to feature Vietnamese martial arts. I'm psyched.

You silly Cambodian kiddies...

Boy befriends 4.8-metre-long python

How crazy would it be if this happened to you as a kid? I really want a Burmese python stuffed animal now...

I found an Al Jazeera report on this. Check it.

Clazziquai - Fill this Night

I don't understand Hangukmal but I can't get over Clazziquai. I'm going to be screaming Korean melodies in the morning and I won't have any idea what I'm saying.

The Death of Me

I'm starting to think too much about this blog. I couldn't sleep on Monday night/Tuesday morning because I had an idea stuck in my head. I ended up getting up and then writing a block of broken prose. It sounds good and it's kinda spoken word-esque which I think is what I'll make it in the future. I would usually post something like that right away but it's kinda personal and I'm scared the person it refers too might read it. That's another sign that I'm thinking about writing far too much. I'll post it up here in some indefinite amount of time in the future. Some of the shit I write is really raw if it comes out of me right away. I also made a little note in italics that describes my mindset at the time just to remind me when I look back at it:

12/4/07 3:32 AM

Man, I have been thinking about this too much. I couldn’t sleep last night because I felt cold, even with the sweat on my skin. I was trying to sleep tonight and I while I recounted the weekend in my head I thought I was repeating lines that I didn’t think sounded quite right. I had to get up and write. This blog is going to be the death of me. This may well become a poem in the future. Who knows.

I need time to mature before reflecting. I'll be sure to link back to this. This blog will be the death of me.

"Feeling Fucked Up"

I was wasting time on youtube again, just now. I watched Def Poetry Jam season four, episode three and I came upon this bit by Tracy Morgan. As I listened to it, I thought to myself, "Why have I never felt this way before?"

My own question caught me off guard. Would anyone ever want to feel like that? I imagine most would say no, but for those uninitiated to "love," it's an enviable emotion. Sure, it's not as enviable as, say, love itself but it's an experience that I can admit I've never had. Is that fucked up? Seriously, I hear all this shit from people about first kisses and sparks and fireworks and passion and shit, but I still don't feel drawn to it. I've never been on a date, which I imagine is a consequence of me never having asked anyone out, which I imagine is a consequence of my fucked up sense of what I want. In all honesty, despite all the effort to come off as intellectual (not really effort, but more just the way I am) and despite the way I think people think of me I just don't give a fuck about having a close, lovey dovey relationship with a girl. Don't get me wrong. I'll talk to a girl that's cool, and I'll hang out with the ladies. But in the end, it just isn't that different from hanging out with my boys (except, perhaps, for limitations in what you can say, and those don't even exist with some girls). Frankly, I don't desire anything more from a girl in terms of a relationship.

If I wanna fuck, then I just wanna fuck.

Maybe it sounds like hookup culture is what's for me, but even then: Where's the draw? Fuck and run? Maybe I'm too nice, or maybe I have a disillusioned view of what a relationship should be. Not even peer pressure, the mightiest of all forces in the adolescent universe, has yet convinced me to give it a try. What's the problem (is it a problem?)? Am I too nice? Am I too scared?

Am I actually thinking too much?

I want to be an amored ice bear when I grow up.

The Golden Compass Trailer