1. the hallway reeks of cat crap
2. the hallway reeks of cat crap sprayed over with various colognes and perfumes which worsen the smell
3. shower knobs come off
4. and clang on the floor like frying pans
5. shower knobs come off when you have soap in your eyes
6. you hear bouncing shower knobs all the way to your room which is a mile away
7. flea-infested cat that climbs and sits on your table in the canteen and stares at you in bored apathy while you protect your food with one hand and shoo the feline with the other
8. cretins who don't flush after crapping
9. socially inept roommates who make up for their social ineptness by chatting all night with other socially inept losers
10. out of the eight faucets in the bathroom, only a random three work every day
11. the fact that you have to try five faucets before you find one that actually works
12. roommates who borrow books and return them dismayed, disappointed, after reading parcels of cynicism, apathy, black humor, and satire which they fail to comprehend
13. nobody interesting enough to talk with
14. food that taste like overboiled rubber slippers
15. smothering your food with ketchup or toyo to hide the taste of overboiled rubber slippers
16. immortal boogers on bathroom walls
17. queuing for the shower
18. queuing before a shower cubicle for hours when it has no occupant
19. the scowling fat mopwoman
20. roommate who snores like a dead drunk scowling fat mopwoman
21. the fact that nobody farts
22. the fact that nobody farts but me
23. the fact that nobody farts loudly and drives off everybody else but me
24. everybody is ugly, charmless, and undeniably unfuckable
25. sporadic blackouts
26. sporadic blackouts at the slightest rain shower
27. creepy hallways lit by orange emergency lights during sporadic blackouts
28. dilapidated closets filled with graffiti, stickers, and names of the previous occupants with dates on
29. "this used to be my locker!" fuck you who cares
30. "KATHY '89" admit that nobody cares you exist
31. "KATHY '89" admit that nobody cared for twenty-one years
32. "i have no room for sadness" admit that you are a depressed nobody contemplating suicide
33. fire exits that are padlocked half the time
34. fire exits with shattered windows where cats can sneak into and crap in the hallway
35. idiots who unwittingly step on the cat crap and spread cat crap footprints on the entire length of the hallway
36. windows that haven't been cleaned in ten years
37. bed bunks that sink at the center
38. roommates who sleep with exposed underboobs (the underside of their breasts) and underwear and with a hand poised at their crotch
39. the fact that you use a pail and tabo to take a bath when the shower is working
40. regurgitating toilets
41. toilets that don't flush
42. toilets that don't flush when you have the longest, fattest, blackest turd
43. and someone is next in line
44. people who go to class with the clothes they slept with on
45. people who go to their class in pajamas
46. there is not a single curtain in the entire building
47. black walls that used to be white
48. the freaky empty basement that looks like a portal to an underworld exclusively inhabited by evil fat mopwomen
49. unnerving clumps of hair that choke drains
50. Jesus thumpers having prayer meetings at the function hall
51. sigfuckingsheets
52. the election of hyperactive overenthusiastic dorm officers whom you just want to punch in the face
53. freshies who make rapport by turning the conversation into an interview
54. everybody clapping and hooting in the canteen when someone drops anything metallic
55. security she-guards who look like clones of each other
56. the fact that we have macho lesbian canteen personnel
57. the fact that we have macho lesbian canteen personnel who pretend to be women
58. girls who shriek standing on their beds and panicking over an innocuous cockroach
59. girls who shriek standing on their beds while aimlessly hurling their slippers at the innocuous cockroach
60. girls who shriek at a cockroach like they've just seen a man-eating humongous cockroach
61. the slow internet connection
62. because everybody else is watching stupid videos of gibbons making out
63. they (refer to #57) don't serve enough rice
64. they (refer to #57) don't serve enough viand/ulam
65. lizards that drop randomly from the ceiling
66. lizards that drop dead from the ceiling
67. the girl who leaves tissue on top of the toilet tank with yellow urine blotches on it
68. the note that says, "hindi dito ang trashcan k?" and points an arrow to the amassed tissue paper with yellow urine blotches
69. the fact that this girl is now an applicant at UP Writers Club
70. ten-year-old blackened mattress heavy with legions of dead bedbugs
71. the psychomachofugly dishwasher dude who stares at my breasts and struts in front of me during breakfast with his checkered apron on
72. the psychomachofugly dishwasher dude who incessantly tries to establish eye contact and incessantly fails
73. the fact that the dorm is a ten-minute walking distance away from class
74. the fact that I have to walk ten minutes to class
75. the fact that I have ten more minutes to walk back to the dorm
76. the fact that I have nine classes to walk for every week
77. idiots who waste their energy howling and hooting when the lights come back on only to waste the rest of their life on Facebook
78. I can't go out to pee at the wee hours because of the desolate and starkly nightmarish hallway going to the bathroom
79. safetyholics who padlock their luggage and cabinets and everything
80. safetyholics who leave the room locked when I'm out butt-naked and keyless in the bathroom
81. morons who think they have ESP and can sense other supernatural morons
82. MTV freakazoids who play Charice's Pyramid at full volume
83. MTV freakazoids who play Charice's Pyramid at full volume on repeat mode
84. waking up from the sound of some insensitive dipshit slamming the door
85. and never getting back to sleep
86. proliferation of ghastly videos like Legally Blond Musical
87. and letting my roommate force me to watch it
88. while she says "I swear you won't regret it!" and I did
89. drama queens crying loud enough for everybody to hear
90. drama queens crying over some stupid brainless asshole who left them for some other stupid brainless girl
91. roommates who kneel and pray to a grimy wall
92. brownish pantyliners left in shower cubicles
93. bloody napkins
94. shampoo sachets
95. wet underclothes hanging at bathroom windows and blocking the sunlight
96. pseudofrench intellectuals who chirp "Oui!" every time you call their name
97. the creepy full-length mirror before the stairs
98. self-conscious ducklings who constantly inspect their ugly reflections at the creepy full-length mirror like its going to change anything
99. having to transfer brandy into a bottle of Green Leaf Iced Tea just to get a drink
100. curfew at ten fucking pm which is still broad fucking daylight
101. the fact that it took me 101 reasons to convince myself to bounce my butt out this dorm

Lord Nibbler Almighty, Futurama Season 6 is out! And I can't watch them episodes because of the poor dratted internet connection here at the dorm.X0 Gaddemmet. When I skedaddle out of here I shall have my newly rented room--with no socially disabilitated roommates to live with! Gaddemdem!--equipped with satellite internet so I can stream Futurama anonymously forever! And watch porn.XP Gad.

Went to Rizal Library yesterday to check some books for my thesis. Rizal Library, in Ateneo, my college from the olde times yore. It's been, what, six years since I last flaked off a dead skin cell on their princely manicured grounds. Now there's an overpass near Copylandia, and new buildings and walkways inside the campus. But there's still them douchebag airheads and pompous bimbos with revealing portable airbags on their chests. I remember thinking: atenistas are polarized into two camps: the fashionista airheads and the four-eyed dorklords. My blockmates were similarly forked into two. And because I was a frumpish awkward she-buffoon with black-rimmed glasses, I joined the dorklords. I was the official dorklady because I was the only girl. Our only topic of interest was: Calculus. When a pirateship stirred this way and the wind stirred that way and you're alone on a lifeboat on point eks-wai-zay on the GPS and you only have a spoon to paddle with, in what magnetic direction and how long will you paddle before you reach the island? Those were the days. After six years in UP, any microscopic memory of Ateneo has been zapped out my brainz to make room for literature. I have almost forgotten everything, everything, until I shuffled back there yesterday.

I stepped into Rizal Library and asked the apefaced guard where I can sign in as a visiting researcher and the guard was like, Do you have a letter of recommendation? I said, I used to study here, but no. And ignoring my riposte he said, Well, you need to have a letter of recommendation from your professor or librarian before I can let you in. Then I said, Oooooooookay, but I'm just going to take a peek at one book, just one tiny book on page something-something and I'll go along my way. But he said, No, so sorry no can do, not with that pair of slippers. He dropped his eyes on my feet, a pair of mountaineer's feet with disastrously scabby skin and nasty dirty toenails--instantly we looked away both. So I just have to come back then, I said. And he said, You better.

It was such a pleasure to visit my alma mater only to be unwelcomed and shoved out the door. So they have a dress code now I see. Next time I'll let him read out loud my type-written font-size-forty letter of recommendation and stamp a footprint of my asphalt-soled climbing shoe on his forehead. Take that you inferior scowling primate you.XP

I just do NOT get what the bloody hell the thesis is for. Creative Writing 199 is supposed to be some sort of introduction to our creative masterwork, the folio, CW 200. I'll turn in a collection of crappy short stories and a bit of creative nonfiction that'll be recycled and rewritten as short stories to reach the required number of pages. But just what the HELL is CW 199 for?? I've spent the entire day in the library breaststroking in the quicksand of metaphors and epiphanies of James Joyce and Jose Dalisay--my SUPPOSED thesis that's SUPPOSED to help me with my folio--despite my hunger, hangover, hebetude, and sleep deprivation, when it struck me: what in Zoidberg's fart am I doing here?? I can write my folio without any superfluous literary stymie.XP I mean, who cares about James Joyce? He just wrote Ulysses and Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man like that means anything. His works don't have any connection with my folio, besides, so what's the effing point??

WHYYY???

Professor Issy dissed my thesis on Kurt Vonnegut and Chuck Palahniuk and Toby Litt, saying, "Reality is, you have to place your thesis in the immediate environment you're in: the Philippine setting," and so on when she had previously said that the world has shrunk and it's inevitable for us to have foreign influences and that we can write about foreign books and literary techniques and now she's taken it back and I'm forced to write something about a contemporary Filipino fictionist, say, Jose Dalisay, who is the closest thing to have American literary influences--like who?? Like James Joyce, the inkhorned wizard who masturbated with his pens and ejaculated jets of ink in crumpled scraps of paper which were later read as "one of the most important works of Modernist Literature".

The closest possible justification for such a worthless topic is: I have American literary influences, is all, not that Dalisay nor Joyce has anything to do with it. Goddamnit.

I am such a moron. An artistic moron, to prettify the self-deprecation.XP I shall have to slog through the thesis--rectal exhumation research and drafting and redrafting and all--the entire semester with my eyes fixed on some stupid diploma at the vanishing point of my vanishing future.

To my mother, with love and tender loving flying kick in the breastbone. Oh, the suffering I have to endure to earn a flimsy piece of paper.

:: rewind »