That's the name of an upcoming art exhibit.

Lizz painted that flower and a bunch of other stuff for the exhibit. She's awesome.

Opening night is on this Friday, September 4, 2009, starting at 7 PM. All of you are invited. There will be free vegetarian food and wine! Being a meat-eating nondrinker, I'm not really too excited. Yay! I'm so excited!

I turned 29 last Friday. To celebrate, I had lunch with the girlfriend, then went for a game of laser tag and a nice dinner with old friends.

At least that was the plan. Here's what actually happened.

In anticipation of the long fun day ahead, I went to sleep at 2 AM, an hour earlier than my usual bedtime.

Two hours later, I was woken up by a bad stomach ache. I went straight to the toilet. Oh yay, diarrhea on my birthday. Great. I knew it--the tofu from last night tasted a bit funny. Shouldn't have eaten it.

Little did I know that things were about to get worse. A lot worse.

As I washed my hands, I felt queasy all of a sudden. Moments later, streams of vomit started shooting out of my mouth, totally catching me by surprise. Good news: I was right over the sink. Bad news: a significant portion of the vomit came out through my nose. Ouch.

Joyfulchicken says: BLAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!
Jew Chicken says: Happy Vomitzvah.

After a good five or six heaves, I looked down and examined my handiwork. There were quite a lot of solid chunks in my vomit, almost enough to clog up the sink. Gross.

Throwing up did make me feel better though, so I gargled, cleared my nose, brushed my teeth, and got ready to go back to sleep.

But first, I had to replenish the lost fluids so that I wouldn't die of dehydration. I looked in the fridge and found a bottle of grape-flavored Gatorade. Perfect! I gulped it down and went back to bed.

Just as I was about to drift off, I suddenly felt queasy again. Oh god, no! As the vomit climbed up my throat, I pressed both hands over my mouth in an attempt to buy myself enough time to get to the bathroom. It didn't work, and I puked all over the bedroom floor.

I ran over to the sink and continued emptying the contents of my stomach. Again, there were a lot of solid chunks, except this time, everything was purple.

It wasn't even 5 AM yet, and my birthday was already ruined. I ended up canceling all my plans and spending most of the day wallowing in bed, drifting in and out of sleep. I guess that officially makes it my worst birthday ever.

Oh well, at least I didn't throw up again.

I haven't posted a new blog entry in the last 11 days, probably the longest this site has gone without an update in all four years of its existence. I guess I've been extra lazy.

In my desperation to post something/anything, I dug into an old text file that contains various aborted blog ideas and unfinished entries. There, I found this short three-year-old piece that seems to be a blog entry but was never published.

I have been playing NBA Live 06 a lot lately. It's a crappy game and a disgrace to the NBA Live franchise, but I like wasting time.

Broadcasting legend Marv Albert provides the play-by-play commentary that adds a little life to this often lackadaisical game. Sometimes, when a player attempts a shot, Marv would say his name, and when he misses, Marv would shout, "Off!" e.g. "Iverson... off!" or "James... off!"

That's all fine until I played the Portland Trailblazers last night and little-known player Jarrett Jack missed a shot.

Hearing Marv Albert shout "Jack off!" was both frightening and awesome.

I think I shelved that entry at the time because it was too short and possibly not funny enough. Yes, believe it or not, I used to have standards. When chickenmafia.com was new and shiny, I actually put serious effort into crafting blog entries designed to entertain my readers.

Nowadays, I see blogging as an activity not much more important than, well, jacking off, which for some is an apt metaphor for blogging anyway.

I don't know why you people still visit my blog despite the drop in the quality and quantity of entries, but... thank you. Suckers.

The following was an entry to a contest. I didn't win. But I'm leaving the entry unedited. Okay, mostly unedited. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't take out the horrible "You're the 1, Goldilocks" line (and title) required by contest rules.

Anyway, Lizz is trying to sell the laptop. Contact her if you're interested.

 

Back when I was a teenage boy, there were few things I considered more embarrassing than to be seen with my mother in public. It's not that I didn't love my mom, but I, like many boys at that age, desperately wanted to prove that I can be strong and independent.

My mom of course would have none of that. She constantly tried (still does, actually) to baby me despite my vehement protests. So when I went on my first camping trip as a 13-year-old rookie boy scout, I was delighted at getting to spend a few days far away from my mom. Except I didn't really get to. On the morning of day 3, the scoutmaster came over to my tent and said, "your mother is here." I groaned.

Something good came out of my mom's surprise visit though. She brought four big boxes of mamon (Filipino sponge cake) from Goldilocks Bakeshop, more than enough to feed everyone at camp. I was very popular for about fifteen minutes that day.

As the years passed, I continued to associate Goldilocks with giving. No, I'm not a particularly giving person. It's just that I often forget birthdays and other special occasions, and Goldilocks is always there to save my butt. Drop by the bakeshop and buy a nice cake before heading off to the party--how convenient! I think I've bought almost a dozen cakes as last-minute gifts in the past year alone.

Still, my favorite Goldilocks memory is that of the day my mom visited me at camp. I remember having kids I barely knew come up to me and thank me for giving them free mamon. Sure, most of them only did so after the scoutmaster told them to, but it felt good nonetheless. Making other people happy can make me happy? Who knew?

I wanted to try and recreate the experience, so I bought a box of fluffy mamon last Sunday afternoon and handed them out to random strangers in the park.

  *12 pieces for 203 pesos--quite reasonable

Well, at least that was the plan. I chickened out at the last minute (hey, strangers are scary) and ended up giving the mamon to the good people of UU Philippines. Of course, I had the whole thing on video.

Ha! Isn't giving fun? I'm not sure how Lizzy felt about getting the leftovers, but everyone else seemed happy. The mission was a success! Yay!

This is not an electric car

I saw a lot of lovely cars at the Manila International Auto Show two weeks ago. You have to take my word for it because apparently, I can't hold my fucking hand still when taking pictures with my camera phone--all the images came out blurred. I fail.

Of course, I didn't get to do anything with the nice cars except look, drool, and take bad pictures. I would have given my left testicle (the smaller one) to take the Ford GT out for a spin, but I wasn't even offered the chance. There was one car available for test drive though: the REVAi, a tiny odd-looking electric car from India.

This is an electric car

On a whim, I signed up for a test drive. I had to fill out a form that basically said I'd be responsible for any damage to their car but they wouldn't be responsible for any damage to me. Sounds fair. After that, a salesman led me out to the parking lot, which was pretty far from the display booth. I was regretting it halfway through the long walk, but I didn't want the effort I spent filling out the form to go to waste, so I soldiered on.

The first thing I noticed after climbing into the REVAi was a sharp screeching noise. The salesman explained that it was coming from the air conditioner and not the engine. I thought he was just bullshitting me like car salesmen do, but he turned the aircon off, and sure enough, the noise was gone. I immediately turned it back on though--I was already sweaty from the long walk, and to drive in the sweltering summer heat of Manila without air conditioning would be inhumane torture.

Being a responsible driver, I did a quick pre-drive check. I saw that the side mirrors were angled too low for me to see anything useful. That was when I found out that there are no power controls for the side mirrors, and I would have to stick my hands out the windows to adjust them manually. Screw that. Who needs side mirrors anyway?

I fumbled with the weird handbrake (confusing), turned a plastic knob to put the car into gear (cute), and stepped on the gas pedal. The car lurched forward, and I soon decided that it felt pretty like a golf cart. No, that's not exactly a compliment.

And maybe I'm just a bad driver, but the car seemed to have the tendency to understeer. I took a left turn too fast and drifted one lane to the right, almost running over a fat man, or rather, almost bouncing off him. I don't think it's possible to actually run over anything larger than a poodle with that tiny car.

The test drive was over in less than five minutes. It wasn't a bad experience overall--at least I didn't wreck the car--but I was underwhelmed. Also, my ears were bleeding from the nonstop screeching of the aircon.

I forgot to ask about the price, but that's not really important. I won't be buying one anytime soon. Reducing carbon emission and obsoleting fossil fuel are laudable goals, but I don't think electric cars are ready for prime time in this country. I just don't see how driving one of those tiny tin boxes on the chaotic streets of Metro Manila would result in anything other than ridicule or death, or maybe both.

But hey, your mileage may vary.

* Sunday afternoon

Blah blah guy: Hello, is this _____?
Me: Yes.
Blah: This is blah blah from Fitness First, we would like to invite you for a trial workout.
* Some background info, the company I work for gives gym benefits to employees. They weren't calling me because they heard I've had one too many Snickers bars.

Now I've been doing martial arts for a few years now, the reason I haven't used my gym privileges was because I was already pursuing my aspirations of being a punching bag in an MMA gym. But since he said the magic word--jacuzzi--I thought I'd at least give it a try.

Me: You guys have boxing at least?
Blah: Yeah, there's "BODY COMBAT," it's a combination of kickboxing and tai chi.
* At this point, I was sold. I get to fight and soak in a tub: hell yeah!

So imagine my surprise when I saw what "BODY COMBAT" really was. Let me put it this way, if martial arts had a gay brother, "BODY COMBAT" would be the offspring that it makes with its life partner through cloning. Liberace would probably get a hard-on from it. I was watching incredulously as the recruitment chick urged me to join the class, which was already in progress when I got there. I was out of there soon as I heard "No, No, No, No--No, No There's No Limit" and intermittent outbursts of "Wooh!"

So please, if you want to learn how to fight, go to a boxing gym or whatnot. If not, at least practice playing dead.

I have acute gastritis again! What's more, I'm also experiencing excruciating stomach cramps! So far, I've been to the crapper three times already, each time muttering prayers and promising stuff to God. On my third visit I had even promised to give up porn if he would just let the pain go away....

Anyway, so I went to the doctor and he prescribed me some German-made Ultracarbon Charcoal tablets for the gas. When I was ready to take them, I realized that they're real charcoal! If you look at the picture carefully you might notice the charcoal smudges on my index finger.

I was contemplating if I should take them. Surely you can trust the Germans. Right?!! But it's charcoal... from the coal mines... handled by sweaty miners with their dirty hands.... Isn't it comparable to licking a stone? eating soil?

Then I felt the gas acting up and had no choice but to pop in two tablets followed by lots of water. I didn't get to taste them. But I plan to take a bite off one tomorrow and tell you what they taste like.

UPDATE: Pretty anticlimactic... it doesn't have any taste! I even bit it a couple of times it to confirm. Paper probably has more flavor. It tasted like very clean paper.

WARNING: Kids, don't try this at home.

I got home late Wednesday night to find my PC showing a blue screen of death instead of downloading porn the latest TV episodes. I pressed the reset button, and everything was fine... until I got another blue screen of death a few minutes later. I rebooted several more times, and got the lovely blue screen within a few minutes each time. I was seeing red, and when the PC died yet again, I lost my temper and gave it a hard kick.

I immediately felt remorse. I could have damaged my hard drives with that! What's wrong with me? I decided to give it one last try before I give up and cry myself to sleep. And guess what? It worked, and I haven't encountered another blue screen ever since. Huh. How did that happen? Maybe a tiny insect got fried on my motherboard, and my kick knocked it loose? I don't know. All I know is that violence works. Ha!

Once again, kids, don't try this at home.

* * *

My pattern of abusive behavior towards computers started back when I was in high school. One day, my old CRT monitor began to show an annoying purple tint. After fruitless minutes of adjusting hue and color temperature and whatnot, I got very frustrated. And what better way to deal with frustration than some violence? I whacked the left side of the monitor. The purple tint magically disappeared.

It came back the next day. I whacked the monitor again, and it worked. Eventually, the ghost of Barney would come back more and more often and would require harder and harder whacks to exorcise. I slapped and whacked the poor monitor constantly for months until it finally died.

* * *

I hadn't posted a new blog entry in the last 10 days. I think chickenmafia.com had never gone this long without updates before. Tsk tsk.

It's not as if I had nothing to write about. I went to a few blogger events recently, and I had the responsibility to announce that artsy fashion brand Volcom has a cool T-shirt design contest and that the California Pizza Kitchen has... pizzas. But I didn't. I was just lazy I guess.

I wonder if violence would work on me as well as it did on my PC. If someone threatens to kick me in the nuts every time I go two days without blogging, what would I do?

Hmm. I'd probably start wearing a protective cup.

On my birthday a few weeks ago, I forced myself to wake up much earlier than usual. No, it wasn't an attempted lifestyle change or anything like that. A travel agency was handling the renewal of my recently expired passport, and they helpfully scheduled for me, a night owl, to appear at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) at the ungodly hour of 9 AM... on my freaking birthday. (Thanks a lot, you guys. That was the best birthday gift ever. Now please die.)

I don't remember ever having to make a personal appearance at the DFA to get my passport renewed. Well, it's supposedly a new bureaucratic regulation imposed after 9/11 to ensure that the photos on terrorists' passports match their faces, because yeah, all local terrorists carry authentic Philippine passports.

And boy did the bureaucrats go overboard with the accurate photo thing. The DFA website has a three-page "guidelines on new photo requirements for machine-readable passport." I see that they have trimmed the PDF file down to a neat 850 KB. When I first downloaded the guidelines a few months ago, there were three separate files with a total size of 22.3 MB. Apparently, the morons who run the website have learned about the magic of JPEG compression since then... yay progress.

The document is a bureaucrat's wet dream. Some of the rules are somewhat reasonable, but others are just plain ridiculous. Take this one: "When having their photos taken, applicants may smile. The 'Mona Lisa' smile is recommended." Thank you, dear government, for giving us permission to smile like Mona Lisa. And this one: "Use of earrings for women is allowed, provided earrings are small. For men, the wearing of earrings is not allowed." Unfair! What happened to gender equality?

The rule I loath the most was "both ears of the applicant should be visible." I loath it because I have longish hair that covers both ears. If I were to change my hairstyle just for the passport picture, would I have to show my ears to pass airport inspection each time I travel? That's silly.

The rule has a loophole though: "It is all right if the ears of a Muslim applicant or an applicant who is a member of a Religious Order (nun) is not visible in the photograph." (Did you catch the wrong subject-verb agreement? "Ears is not visible," heh.) Unfortunately, I'm neither a Muslim nor a nun, so I had to pull my hair back behind my ears when I had my photo taken a few days before my DFA appointment. Doing so made me look like a dork... a gay dork. In retaliation, I refused to do a "Mona Lisa smile" for the camera. That in hindsight wasn't the best idea. I'm now doomed to look like an angry gay dork on my passport for the next few years. Yay me.

The third page of the document is full of sample photos that were rejected according to the guidelines (probably used without the consent of the poor rejected people in the pictures). Here are some of my favorites. See if you can guess why they were rejected.

Easy? Here are the answers.

Photo #1: hair across the eyebrow/eye area. Yeah, that strand of hair made her totally unrecognizable.

Photo #2: unnatural skin tone. Really? How do you know that's not his natural skin tone?

Photo #3: uneven skin color. Really? She looks fine to me.

Photo #4: yellowish skin tone. As an ethnic Chinese, I have this to say: Fuck you! I didn't choose to be born with yellowish skin! Racists pigs!

So would my photo be rejected? Judgment Day soon came along. I rushed my sleepy ass out the door at 8:30 AM on my freaking birthday to make the long drive to the DFA. Having never been there before, I promptly got lost. It was almost 10 when I finally found the shithole. No, it really was a shithole. The entrance to the passport renewal area was in a dark and stinky back alley, with a crowd of stinky people spilling out into the street.

Fortunately for me, my mother and my sister were there since 8, and they saved me a spot near the head of the queue. I usually have strong queuing ethics, but on this particularly day, I didn't care. I pushed my way through the crowd, ignoring the hateful stares. It was my birthday, and I deserved a break.

I stepped up to the window. The guy who was supposed to verify my identity barely glanced up at me and made me sign a form that I didn't bother to read. An angry old man behind a table then grabbed my hands, pushed my thumbs onto a dirty purple inkpad, then pressed them against boxes on the form. Um, I could have done that myself, but thanks for the hand holding.

The whole process took five minutes, and it only took that long because my mom kept peppering the bureaucrats with annoying questions about proper procedure for this and that. I briefly wondered if my mom has OCD and if it's hereditary.

Anyway, I'm glad that the whole thing is over with. As a reward for my efforts, I received a shiny new machine-readable passport with a horribly ugly picture a few days later. I know I should be ecstatic (oh thank you thank you, DFA), but I find myself dreading the day five years from now (I think... my passport is locked up in my drawer and I'm too lazy to check) when I'll have to do this shit all over again.

Not all of you know that my dad had a stroke a little over five years ago. He's unable to raise his left arm higher than his shoulders, his left hand is virtually immobile, and he can only use his left leg to march, which means he walks in an awkward way all the time.

Now he recently acquired a car with power windows that will go all the way up or down with a mere flick of the switch. He wanted that feature since he can only use one hand. He figured that there's no sense wasting time waiting for the windows to go all the way up.

Last night, he went out with some friends. After dinner, he got in the car while his friends were still dicking around near the restaurant entrance. He grew impatient and did the following (in this order):

1. Flicked the switch to close the window.
2. Decided he wanted to hurry up his friends.
3. Put his right hand out the window (His left hand is immobile, remember?) to wave his friends to the car.

It was too late when he realized the stupidity of those actions. The window was almost all the way up, and he was not fast enough to get his hand out of the way. Needless to say, his hand got stuck.

You can just imagine the trouble he was in at this point--his one good hand stuck in the window, his seat belt on, and him sitting in an awkward way. He was trapped in his own car. He flapped his hand to call attention to no avail. He attempted to take a bite at the door lock hoping to get it to open, but he couldn't reach it because of the seat belt.

Then, in a moment of desperation and a rare display of flexibility, he got his right knee high enough to slam the car horn and honk it like crazy. His friends heard him and managed to push the window down and extricate him from his predicament. It's a good thing he wasn't alone in a secluded part when this happened or he'd win a prize from Guinness for the silliest way to die.

Don't worry, he's safe. No injuries to his hand or mouth--just a bruised ego.

UPDATE: I got my dad to do a reenactment this morning.