Don't Fake The Funk

@#$@#!# :)

What I really want to do is talk about the rising gas prices and how the freakin oil companies are fucking the little people and getting rich in the process. Or how politics is keeping alternatives to the combustion engine from ever reaching the market.

I also want to talk about how annoyed I am at this country, and my homeland, and at people in general for stupidity. Famine and pestilence are a part of nature. Shit happens. War, I don't care what you say, is necessary. The strong have always taken advantage of the weak. Death is unavoidable. But stupidity. Man, we don't need that fifth horseman of Apocalypse.

I wanted to talk about all this negative stuff, but I can't. Today is kuya's girlfriend's birthday. So I have to be happy. Thanks a lot, Michelle. Happy freakin' birthday!

Seriously, I hope you have a good one. :)

Yardwork Leads To The Dark Side

This morning started normally enough. The backyard needed some work, so I decided to do it, since it wasn’t as hot today as it was yesterday. Those of you that know me and have been to my house know that a few years ago my cousin and I pulled down the basketball hoop in the backyard after a fiercely contested slam dunk contest. I can’t remember who won but I do remember the shriek the tortured metal made as the pole broke right at its base. It was fun destroying it. Afterward we laid the hoop on the ground and left it there. I figured this morning was a good time to finally dismantle and throw it out.

All the bolts and screws holding the damn thing together were rusted and it took some doing taking it apart. The sun was stronger than I realized. So after I was done I was tired and a bit short-tempered. I piled all the parts by the curb thinking that the garbage truck would pick it up this weekend.

My nosy neighbor called to me from across the street to tell me that the DSNY wouldn’t touch the fiberglass backboard and metal hoop and other assorted parts. I was a little annoyed at his tone of voice but I kept my mouth shut. He kept talking, of course, and said I ought to go to the dump and throw it out there.

The dump. Shit. That place sucks. I thought the city closed the Staten Island dump already, but my neighbor was probably right, so I packed all that junk in my car and drove away.

This is Staten Island during the summer. Kids are all over the place playing on the streets. One stupid teenager yelled through my open windows just to say, “Hey you got a basketball hoop sticking out of your car” in that annoying Staten Island accent that I’ve grown to hate. It literally gave me a headache.

I finally get to the dump and it stinks like a mofo in there. I expected that, of course. You can’t live on Staten Island and not expect the dump to smell worse up close than it does from your house eight miles away. But I tell you, it didn’t help my headache or my mood one bit. Whatever, man. I got out of the car and started unloading the junk to carry it to a big mound of fresh, newly dumped junk. It didn’t take that long for me to finish, and soon enough I was carrying the last piece, the pole with a jagged rusted edge, to the mound. My hands were sweating so it slipped a little as I was carrying it and the edge cut my hand. Man that got me pissed off.

With a growl and a curse I threw the damn thing into the mound.

Just as it hit the ground, I felt a tremor. Initially I wasn’t too worried because I remembered hearing once that gas from all the decomposing garbage sometimes builds up and causes the dirt piled up over it to buckle. But then right next to where I was standing, the ground opened up and I fell through.

I felt like I was falling for ages before I finally hit the bottom. From the edge of the crevice that the tremor created these guys were looking at me. They looked about twenty feet up and they were asking the stupidest questions. “Yo you alright?”

What the heck do they think? I’m literally in the fuckin’ garbage dump. I told them to get a rope so they could pull me out. One guy said there weren’t any ropes and I had to climb out myself.

Frustrated, I gritted my teeth and let out a loud snarl. The ground shook again and the crevice opened up some more. And I fell again. Landing knocked the air out of my lungs and it took me a while to stand up. Above me, the opening seemed impossibly far away, like a blue-white jagged bolt of lightning frozen in a black sky made of dirt.

I tried to get my bearings and I wound up bumping my head on an old barbecue grill sticking out of the side of the crevice. This far underground the grill must have been dumped here decades ago. Holding my head and cursing I stomped around and my foot kicked something metal. It rolled away and skittered against the side of the crevice. It was an odd thing, cylindrical, almost like an extra-large motorcycle handle bar. There was a switch on it and I figured it was a flashlight. It was fairly heavy so I guessed that the batteries were still in there, but what were the chances that it still worked? I flicked the switch anyway – and was blinded for a couple of seconds. Suddenly I smelled something burning and felt more than heard a heavy thump on the ground.

My eyes adjusted. A long red-silver light emitted from the 'flashlight' I was holding. But the light itself looked solid and it ended abruptly about three feet from the handle rather than gradually fading into a cone like normal flashlights do. At my feet was half of the barbecue grill with the edges melted as though a welding torch cut through it. I waved the bar of light around and it emitted a low frequency hum.

“Hey what’s that light?” The guy was calling to me from above.

Instantly I switched it off and yelled back, “You’re seeing things. There’s no light down here.”

“I’m seeing things. There’s no light down there,” the guy said to the crowd that was gathering on the surface. That weak-minded fool just parroted back what I told him. Then it dawned on me and I realized what I had found.

With a grin and dark thoughts in my mind I clipped the light saber to my belt loop and began climbing out.

Happy Birthday Lola

I miss you.

Thirty Years of Aging

The left side of this picture is me at age 3. The right side is me at age 33. I'm glad to see that my hairline hasn't receeded, nor has my nose gotten bigger.

Bumper Sticker

10,000

So my ten thousandth (did I spell that right?) visitor to my website came and went without much fanfare. I was hoping to program something so that that visitor would get a special greeting but laziness stopped me. However, I was able to trace back and find out who it was. It turns out that the 10,000th visitor to my website was none other than my kuya's girlfriend Michelle. Thanks Michelle!

It's quite a milestone. But maybe it's not as impressive as it sounds -- ten thousand people have read my weblog but most are repeat-offenders and some are probably bots or spiders that prowl the web. And it did take more than a year to reach that number.

Still I think that's pretty cool.

Jersey Predictions

One year for my birthday, I got a Charles Oakley Knicks jersey. He was promptly traded the following season. This year, Beth's sister got me an Allan Houston Knicks jersey. Good-bye Allan Houston.

I hope these two jersies (jerseys? jersii? mga jersey?) become collectors items.

Encountering Americans On America's Day

Yesterday, July 4th, Beth, my family, and I celebrated my grandmother's 93d birthday at a Benihana's in Menlo Park, NJ. After the meal, I waited for Beth as she went to powder her nose, while the rest of the family started filing out of the building, so we were separated a bit from the rest of our group. As Beth, Tita Caroline, and I walked toward the exit I saw Weng and Tita Vivien holding open the double doors for this really tall, really heavy-set woman who was walking into the restaurant.

It was a bit of an odd sight, and not just because two comparatively diminutive Filipino women were flanking a lumbering giant. The lady walking in was angry, and she was walking directly through the middle of the group of my family members with her elbows out as though she was trying to cause a collision.

At first I thought nothing of it, and I turned to officially introduce Tita Caroline to Beth. Then I heard the lady turn and say to no one in particular, "They think they own the place! They didn't even bother to move out of the way!" That got me a bit upset, because she said the word "they" with the connotation that she was referring to our group as a minority. Racism. Ah well, what does it matter? Grandma made it to 93.

But the lady said it again, this time to her husband. "They think they own the place!"

So of course, I had to say something. I told her, "You could have gotten out of the way."

Then she said, in the most annoying southern Jersey wannabe-Brooklyn New York accent ever, "Why? You people think you own the place."

I responded, "Apparently so do you. Is your name last name Benihana?"

Then the lady's husband tried to stare me down as he said, "Mind your own business."

The dude was about 6'4" and a good 275 lbs. It was all fat, though. "It is my business. That's my grandmother your wife almost knocked over."

Then the woman, who, by the way, was the same exact size and shape as her husband, repeated, "You people think you own the place!"

I was like, can't she think of something else to say? Then it dawned on me that I was having a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent. So I said, "Have a nice time. Try the shrimp."

This country, although great, is full of people like the couple I encountered yesterday. The majority of Americans that I know really believe that they are owed something by the non-whites living here. A lot of you won't agree with me, but I grew up here and I've experienced more racism and bigotry than you would think is possible in this day and age.

I mentioned the altercation with the fat white lady to our group as we stood outside taking pictures and Weng said, "I guess she was really hungry."

What would Jesus do? He probably would have handled it much better than I did. But for sure that fat white lady wouldn't have tried to knock down Jesus' 93 year-old grandmother.