Blog Soup #13: Dead Cats, King Tys, and Walking Slower

**It is now four minutes to Saturday. This means I made this Friday's deadline. Awesome sauce.

My cab driver swerved past this dead cat on the road because he said it was bad luck. It wasn't even black. It was red and mangled. And then he said it was "mas malas" (worse luck) to hit a live cat because that will be murder and the Virgin Mary will not like it.

His name is Tys, for Tyson, and he wanted a crown tattoo with the words "King Tys" below it. This will be his first, and if he had the actual courage to shut his royal piehole and get needled already, I remember he wanted it a few inches below his left shoulder. I only met him once, in a smoking area in Megamall, and I doubt I'll see him again. And on the off chance that I do see Tys again, then I doubt he'll get crowned a few inches below his left shoulder.

I walked slower today, and I enjoyed perspiring less. That, and I saw a lot more around me. I saw obscenely priced cup cakes with spectacular frostings of blue and red, ugly dresses on sale, big men with small tattoos, and display rack pastries that resembled piles of brown feces. I walked slower today, and this new wealth of impractical shit still impresses me somehow.

Be Safe

I've been in and out of prison these past couple of days. It will be a week tomorrow. Eighty of them crowd that cell, and it smells like death by armpit suffocation in there. This particular death is worse during the 6pm visits because it is usually at that time that half of Pasig Cirrehh's population gets the same idea, minus the "taking a bath" part, and visits.

He testified negative in the afternoon of that 2am buy bust operation. He was sleeping, says a mutual friend, when it happened, and he was jolted into a head aching wakefulness by people with long guns. What screwed them up though, him and five other friends, was when they signed this document that sealed them into custody as long as the investigation is going on. They are still detained as I am writing this.

Shit I Wrote About Facebook

Do not get me wrong, My Dearly Beloved, I like to Facebook. See, nothing compares to the disappointment of finding out how much time you've wasted on other people's business. Absolutely nothing. There is masturbation, but that dedicated art of pounding dick at least erupts in this satisfying climax that is both familiar and addictive. Like-ing does not get you anywhere near the object of your predatory erection's pants.
Oh wait. It does.

Meanwhile, here's a list of nonsense writing that's pointed at everybody's favorite waste of time. That includes myself, of course. I've been writing about Facebook since 2010. This blog's first write up, however, was posted in 2003. It's about breakfast. I have very little to show for it aside from this list that's nine items strong. I will argue, however, that the time I spent on Facebook was dedicated to pure research. And if you ask me, I am not buying that research shit.

1. My Rules on Facebook Likes (Thursday, November 20, 2014)

2. A Message for You Facebook Philosophers (Sunday, September 04, 2011)

3. What to Write on Jesus' Facebook Wall (Friday, May 24, 2013)

4. Truly, Facebook Brings Out the Attention Whore in Each of Us (Wednesday, March 17, 2010)

5. The Seven Annoying Facebook Posters (Introducing The Loser Meter!) (Sunday, November 07, 2010, and this was reposted just recently because it is still relevant)

6. Here's a Tip on What To Like in Facebook (Saturday, June 25, 2011)

7. I Hate Your "Omg I'm So Ugleeeehhh Huhuhu" Facebook Selfie (Friday, August 02, 2013)

8. This is Why I Hate Your Second "I'm Bored" Facebook Status (Friday, July 26, 2013)

9. Blog Soup #11: Your Facebook Status Sucks, Breaking the Three Month Rule, and Hooray for Smelly Third World Shit! (Wednesday, January 05, 2011)

Damp with Pus

**This is for You and Your "I have the lousiest air conditioned job in the world ever omgpls kill me now while I take a selfie." 

Imagine two swollen legs on a pair of denim shorts. 

The bandages on his diabetic legs were wrapped just below the knees and terminated on his ankles. They were a yellowish white, probably because they haven't been changed for a week or so. His left leg was heavier than the right. It was a sickly oval, yellowish because it was damp with pus, and it was ripe for an amputation. It was pregnant with infection, and I can just smell it from where I am, a meter away in the affecting humidity of this third world jeepney. 

It is around two in the afternoon, and I am not sitting alone in an air conditioned taxi. I am sardined in this four-wheeled oven toaster, and all 224,337 of us passengers are marinating in exhaust fumes and everybody else's body odor. These are hardly the best conditions with which to consider somebody else's bad health. I look around me, and I am surrounded by this wealth of opportunities to complain about, but no. I wonder what a leg full of of pus smells like, instead. 

Damp with Pus continues to arrange the packs of cigarettes he's selling so they look tidy and organized. It's probably the least he can do. That and he tries to hide his swollen left leg to no avail since his plastic chair's big enough for his left butt cheek. His plastic umbrella's big enough for his right butt cheek, but he doesn't give a shit. He tends to his wares in earnest, his plump fingers mechanical as he separates the Golds from the Reds, the Menthols from the Lights, and his eyes are nowhere else. 

It is around two in the Philippine afternoon, which is exceedingly punishing for someone with a long sleeved shirt on. My arm pits weep, not for Damp with Pus and his unrewarded dedication to his cigarettes, but because I'm wearing a black, long sleeved shirt in a crowded jeepney at around two in the Philippine afternoon. 

Today he's got this purple shirt on, collared, and, with his dirty complexion, it made him look like an overweight tumor. Props to the shirt, however, for holding his stomach in, all of it, as its oppressive weight fought to fall down the street. Meanwhile, Damp with Pus' knee length denim shorts continue to puzzle me. How did he manage to wear denim shorts? It will brush against his frothing infection, you can bet on that, but what worries me is that his legs are thicker than his thighs. 

Of course he has to remove his bandages, but they... One gets used to the glacial movement of this third world traffic, most especially when one is distracted. 

He already color-coordinated his candies, and there are these impressive rows of Yellows and Reds and Greens that sold for a peso each. He then makes change for a ten, and he does all this without looking at his customer, a high school kid with a white polo and brown slacks on, worn leather shoes and a cheap back pack. Goomela, it said. This kid's probably 12, 13 at the most, but he dragged on that stick like a runner up. His girlfriend, obviously 12, took a puff like a God damned champion. 

The traffic's not moving, which is expected, it is past two in the afternoon, and these uniformed delinquents are rushing out of school. I still can't get used to the smell of poor and exhaust fumes, but such is the life I lead in the third world. I might as well. I took out my handkerchief, spread it on my palms, horizontal and smelling like fabric conditioner, covered my nose with it, and I decided to look at Damp with Pus some more.  

His cigarettes should look tidy. And he ignores the curious stares of strangers as he commits himself to his work. He quits hiding his left leg, and continues to organize his wares. Why, you will detect a defiant spirit in how he goes on with his cigarettes and his candies. And you can tell he'll continue doing this even after both his legs were amputated. 

His cigarettes sell at five pesos a stick, eighty pesos for a pack, and his candies are a peso each. He will keep selling them until he has enough money for maybe a kilo of rice and a can or two of whatever. His insulin shots will wait. And those will wait until his legs are gangrenous and then ripe for that saving amputation. That will be nice, real nice, and I don't think that will happen. 

It is not a happy picture now. But if he meets his 16-hour work days and saves enough money even after the rice and canned whatevers, his future could be bright. Why, if he worked harder than that, which he probably will because he doesn't have a choice anyway, then his future's even brighter, illuminated even, with the blinding fluorescent glare on that operating table. And I see an oscillating saw in that same future, and it reflects a steely glint that makes Damp with Pus' future far brighter. And I doubt that. 

The jeep begins to move, and Damp with Pus makes change for a twenty. I will probably see him in that same spot tomorrow. 

Speaking of Confidence that Causes Erections

**No. And it's still a Friday, and I made my deadline. Meanwhile, I do not fat shame. I love my friends of all sizes in equal measures. The thing is, you should have seen this pig in the mall. 

I ask you now, My Dearly Beloved Sweet Nuts, with unusual sincerity and truthfulness to the letter. When was the last time someone's confidence made you horny? Was there ever a time, just one time, that someone's oozing self belief made you moist to the point of flooding your basement?

There was this really fat, morbidly obese faggot who was wearing this black shirt that was pitiful in how it stretched on him. I tell you, if you had the opportunity to listen closely, then you will imagine a faint scream from that shirt. He had a pair of glasses on, a medium sized shopping bag on his left hand, and he walked as though he was beautiful. Honey, that gay pig was feeling it. And I should admit that a tired black shirt does make one feel fierce somehow, in parts, in small parts. It isn't just the shirt, however, that gave him that swagger in his walk.

Maybe it's all these books on self-empowerment that's leading him on. Maybe he's read one to many memes on the beauty within. Maybe has a valid accomplishment like maybe he has an enormous dick. Perhaps. Maybe I know someone who doesn't give a shit. Maybe that's me.

The back print on his shirt read "Prospect." Prospective what? A cardiac arrest in his thirties? What audacious advertising. It could work though. You can see "Prospect" from the moon.

I will hazard a guess and suspect that "Prospect" meant he was single. And I am not surprised. See, you go ahead and impress your confidence all you want, but that's hardly anything one looks for in a boyfriend. It is awesome that you are confident, and you go girl, but you're as big as a master bedroom. Wait, no. You're so wide and spacious, you might as well be haunted.

You put that goddamn book down, shed those crazy ideas in your head, and start losing weight if you want the rest of your audience to agree with your beauty.

The line "I want to date you because of your impressive confidence" does not happen in real life. I don't remember any mention of "Your perfect grammar made me love you more than masturbation" ever. No. Not in this life, or the life prior to this one. Not in this third world country, and not in this crazy planet.