Slip of the Pen

Those words came from the day’s first well-wisher, Ia. She greeted my blog a happy birthday through SMS, at around one o’ clock in the morning.

Yes, you read that right. Slip of the Pen turns one this day! Not that there are many people who’ll care, but damn is December 29 a special day for this kid, er, corsair. This blog is my very first one, which means that Corsarius the blogger has also leveled up from infant to toddler.

The voyage began simply enough. (Now, that’s dramatic.) I was looking for some place to ’self-publish’ my written pieces, or at the very least, a place where I’ll be forced to write regularly. (Unfortunately, ‘regularly’ can mean every other day or every other week.) Ia — the mysterious lady who goes around visiting (nay, stalking!) blogs while not keeping her own — introduced me to the world of blogging several months before December 29, 2004. At first I didn’t give crap about blogs; heck, even the word “blog” is ugly. (Mabantot na salita, in Tagalog.) So it was a great moment of self-contradiction when I published my first post for my first blog, christened Slip of the Pen.

To all the people who visited this blog, thank you very much. And I mean it. Thank you to the people who regularly dropped by in spite of my oft-mentioned delinquence (for the nth time, my apologies), thank you to the people who perused every entry and burrowed deep into my archives (come on, let the birthday blogger dream), and thank you even to those who only chanced upon this page then clicked on “Next Blog” in a jiffy (it’s the thought that counts). I may have used comical wording, but the “Thank you” is serious. I’m dead serious about that.

To reach 10,000+ hits whilst only posting 62 entries (What’s that, almost one post per week? Horrible!) is quite a source of joy and inspiration for me. And so are the precious tags on the chatbox and comments on every blog entry. I like hearing from readers what they think about this and that piece. Maraming salamat. (That’s “Thank you” in Tagalog.)

Allow me to gratify myself, and present the choice picks for the year that was:

• Sketch. In my own words, “For vanity’s sake, here’s a short vignette about this blogger.”
• Inseparable. My poetic attempt at doing justice to Pepoy’s great pic taken in UP.
• Five Acts of Valentine’s Day: A Postmortem. Dissecting February the 14th has never been so fun.
• The Fall. The Corsarius tries supernatural fiction.
• Dead Cats. An old animal rights essay.
• The Mighty Mouse. In the enigmatic Transience’s words, “This is f*cking hysterical!”
• Habemus Corsarium. I am who I am. Or am I?
• Disjointed Prettiness Ahead. I am playing favorites by again quoting Transience: “Pure f*cking literature.” F-words can be elegant, you know.
• The Filipino Can Do It. My org, UP ACM, wins an international competition. ‘Nuff said.
• The Something of Nothingness. Writer’s block obliterated.
• Deviations. Fiction. Not for children.
• Jupiter Falls. Gold lightning, baby.
• Bottling Up the Ink. A good excuse for delinquent writers.
• Poems: Madness by the Candlelight. A trifecta of senseless verse.

Fortuna dies natalis, Lapsus Calami!

Had there been another X in the title, this would’ve been a vulgar post worthy of being flagged as ‘objectionable content’. However, the ‘XX’ merely stands for ‘20′, that is, twenty things about this corsair. (You know my affinity for the Roman ways.)

Gari over at Bangketa Republique tagged me to do this thang. The Corsarius rarely does these ‘memes’, but I wanted to try this out. I’ve deciced to write this in Tagalog, and as such I’d redirect you now to Karimlan. It’s my blog in the native tongue, rarely updated. Para naman magkalaman ngayon.

I’ll more or less follow Gari’s train of thought. I won’t be tagging anyone specifically — I don’t want to burden busy bloggers; instead, anyone who reads the whole post over at Karimlan is automatically tagged. Fair enough, I think.


[Will be posting something later.]

The Journalist

Stop the press!

Make room for this breaking news — Corsarius Updates Blog, Readers Blast Delinquency. I want it in 72-point Palatino Bold and screaming all caps. Heck, make it the paper’s banner!

If anyone thought The UP Parser was late in releasing its first issue of the academic year, then hang me twice. Even though problems outside of our control were the delay’s reasons, I believe the weight still lies upon its Editor-in-Chief. Yes, yours truly. And though problems outside of my control were the reasons for this blog’s nil output, I believe the weight still lies upon its author. Guess who.

This world should be sued.


The Student

Thesis year. Video streaming, the Rijndael algorithm, eigenvectors, laplace transforms, shift-reduce parsing, syntax-directed definitions, ubiquitous computing, wireless fidelity, binary exponential backoff, carrier sense multiple access, probability mass function, unbiased estimator.

I’m at a loss for words.


The Marketer

Good day, sirs and ma’ams! I am a reluctant technopreneur from the land of the tongue-twisted, fidgeting geeks (otherwise known as Computer Science), and I am here to promote our product, “S^infinity” — S raised to infinity, Service raised to infinity. That sounds good, doesn’t it?

Three “S” words are of chief concern to you, dear sirs and ma’ams. The first word for today is “Shoot”. Shoot your videos using your cameraphones, while I’m shooting down my writing career. What the hell am I doing entering this and that marketing contest? And actually surviving them?

The second word for the day is “Say-what?” Third word is “Sanavagan!”. Fourth word is “Sally-sells-seashells-by-the-seashore.” Wonderful, no?

Sinfinity. S raised to infinity, Superficial Supereminence raised to infinity.


The Histrionicist

This still applies:

The Corsarius is stressed.

My threshold for pain and hardship is going way off the charts. Now I know — I’m a certified masochist.

Right now, if Corsarius was a nation, it’d be ravaged by a plague, battered by typhoons, splintered by a civil war, and besieged by an ally state turned bitter rival.

I’ve been called many things in my life — liar, defensive, good-for-nothing, belligerent, selfish, bad-boy. A few of these words have been thrown at me with more ferocity and frequency lately than ever before. I don’t know if I’m all of these, some of these, or none of these. I can’t tell, and I don’t friggin’ care.

The world can flaunt its eloquence by expressing its disdain of me in a thousand words. I can summarize all those words in one — painful. But who am I to convince the inconvincible, to talk to the un-listening?

The mantra here is to accept. Pain is a wonderful sensation (as long as you’re feeling it because of your own misery, not the ill luck of your close ones). Accept pain, accept it with exceeding openness.

Because deep down, I know I only wished for good things.


The Person With the Pen

Get these four blog-hogging fools out of the way, and let the pen speak for the Corsarius.

[Warning: Not for children.]

Summer came, summer left. Like a steamy, five-minute quickie (you know what I’m talking about), the passing of summer has left me fatigued and short of breath, yet extremely gratified. Though I must apologize for the rather obscene comparison I’ve used, I won’t take it back for a Pulitzer. No other act in the world can offer such a faithful embodiment of my summer experience than a speedy act of making love. Yep, sex and summer are both hot; however, the similarity ends there.

You see, I had two things officially going on these past two months –- my OJT work and STS class. But a closer look reveals that I was actually doing three more off-the-record tasks –- taking charge of UP ACM’s bid for the ACM International Chapter Excellence Award, writing articles for SUMS+UP’s Substance and Simulacra magazine, and planning a better UP Parser for the incoming academic year. Not to mention coming up with my second blog and personal website.

I’m actually surprised I was able to survive summer without falling ill (sue me, but I say this is akin to surviving an ‘encounter’ without suffering from, uh, impotency). Yeah yeah, ‘tis good I got through with it. And I did it with style. (If you’re someone I personally know and you tell me otherwise, I’ll kick your arse.)

So that’s it, it’s over; the fat lady has sung for summer. Two months burned by the Corsarius’ blazing might. Come to think of it, it’s not just a couple of months which went by in this fleeting, blistering fashion –- it has been three years! A trifecta of mindless, drudgery-filled years in a course I simply don’t love.

I didn’t stay in my course to emerge as a world-class computer scientist; I stayed to prove myself. I stayed to prove that I can perform well in one of UP’s toughest courses. As a result, I didn’t just burn away three years of my life. I burned away the potential to become a good journalist, full-fledged writer, or historian –- these are the careers I would’ve liked to have.

In fact, I may have just burned myself.

This minute, even as my mind conjures fantastic analogies between summer and sex, I’ve realized one thing.

I’ve become Corsarius the Self-Immolator.

It’s too late to change courses now. I’m entering my final year in ComSci, I have part-time work at the CS department, I have positions in CS student organizations, I handle the CS publication, and my CS grades are pretty decent just to trash. All of these things have become too important to throw away. If I were to shift, I should’ve done it years ago. So now the only thing I can do is look back at what’s happened, go through the five stages of mourning, and then ponder my next move. A waste of time, isn’t it?

I hope you guys don’t have these same regrets. If you don’t want to have them, plan ahead. Chart your life. Place your hand upon your chest, feel what’s beating inside, and follow that same beat, that strong dub-dub-dub. It’s corny, it’s passé, it’s cliché, but follow your heart’s desire.

And if you do have these regrets, come join me. Let us join forces and burn the world with our combined frustrations. Or die trying.

Till next quickie, er, summer then.

[Don’t mind the picture. I’m opting for a tamer post this time around, after that ratty debacle, haha.]

If you’re a writer, and English is just your second language, do you play favorites?

I did, once. I almost never wrote in Tagalog. A great shame, considering I am Filipino. But it just seemed like I was more comfortable weaving stories in English than in my native tongue. Add the fact that I knew more ‘big’ (read: polysyllable) words in English than in Tagalog, and you have a writer filling up pages and pages of pompous, highfalutin text.

If you’d allow me to make one ridiculous analogy, then let’s just say one tongue was drenched in saliva, and the other was as dry as the Sahara baked to the fullest.

But of course, the times have changed. Eventually, the spit of life found its way to the other tongue, nourishing it, allowing it to smoothly lave and lick at the victuals it desired to consume. These victuals were, of course, your usual yummy morsels of prose and poetry fodder.

To make the poetically abstract lines above clearer –- my ardor of English gave way to my ardor of Tagalog.

Want to really know why I left my blog for a month? Well, this web journal is in English, and I wanted to keep it that way. Unfortunately, I almost abandoned writing in that language. At least for a month.

I found Tagalog better suited to express my recent ‘musings’, which leaned towards Filipino societal concerns and manifested in poems. And what better tongue to use for these ‘nationalistic’ ruminations? Certainly, a Filipino tongue -– Tagalog.

For one whole month, I demoted English to school papers and system documentations. There was no room for creative writing in English.

But now, I want to strike a balance. These two tongues need to share the spit of life. For ridiculous analogy number two, I’d say these two need to finally French kiss.

I began with English. I swung to Tagalog. I will end with both English and Tagalog. That’s what you call having the best of both worlds, er, tongues. For my prose, which consists of my journal writings and –- this is a hush-hush thing between us, okay? –- fantasy ala “swords and sorcery” novels, English is my baby. For my poetry, Tagalog reigns supreme.

So in effect, my escapist doppelganger speaks English, and my serious, patriotic self is fluent in the native speech (did you actually think the Magdalo flag in my Blog Profile was only for decoration?).

As I begin my third year* of ‘true writing’, I guess I have another challenge to face. No more playing favorites.

Dammit Corsarius, enough talk -– let’s get these two tongues tangled up right now.


*Another hush-hush thing of mine. I only began writing for leisure in second year college. Before that, I used my decent command of the two languages only for school requirements and journalism work. Absolutely no self-initiated creative writing. I didn’t even bother to have a diary. Ah, tempus fugit.

Whew.

That was some break.

But definitely well worth it. Imagine — during my despicable one-month abandonment of this blog, I even garnered an award. A great, great weblog award. Heck, it’s so great that I can’t even write the words to properly exaggerate (or poetically understate) the honor bequeathed upon me. If you don’t want to be stricken with sheer envy, then hit the “Next Blog” button on the Navbar above, or just smash your monitor with your keyboard and hear the sibilant ssssssssss that marks the death of your computer life (er, at least until you buy a new monitor).

But if you insist…

The joys of being a blogger! Thank you, www.corsarius.tk!

But of course, I’m not really the World’s Lousiest Blogger. Hell, I can name at least one more guy out there in the blogosphere who hasn’t updated his blog for a century!

And yes, if you had clicked on the link above, then you’d have been taken to none other than this very same blog. And yes again, that sexy-gurrrl image is nothing but a roughshod piece of art by yours truly, surreptitiously ripped from LevelUp! Games’ Ragnarok Online and edited in MS Paint (of all programs).

Which kind of tells you that my one-month absence has done more to unscrew a few nuts and bolts in my head rather than grant rest and peace of mind. Corsarius the Lunatic, anyone?

Actually, it’s quite hard to type in a straightjacket.

*****

So, what the hell am I supposed to say now? “I live”?

No, my friends. I believe it should be, “I apologize.”

I apologize to myself for having neglected my duties as a Citizen of Blog-Nation. I apologize to my blog for having seriously threatened the short life of Slip of the Pen, born December 2004. And most of all, I apologize to all of you, those who came back from time to time to catch up on my posts, only to leave inconvenienced and disappointed.

I am sincerely sorry.

I will make it up to you, guys. I will.

*****

So what happened?

Well, I had actually planned to leave this blog for only two weeks, which was the time when I was battered by final exams, project deadlines, paper submissions, and the like. All in a quest to, yes, scratch another itch. And believe me, I did scratch that one.

And so when the time came to unwind, I…unwound, what else. I immersed myself in the Playstation, WWE mania, Dungeons & Dragons, and basketball. Heck, that was some chilling out, because my writing hand really froze and my creative juice congealed. I forgot my poetry, my novels-in-progress, and most of all — my blog. I just didn’t want to have anything to do with writing for the moment. I wanted to play.

That moment lasted for another two weeks. Hence, the one whole month of absence.

But as they say, you can’t keep a good thing down for so long. And so, here I am once again.

Presenting, Slip of the Pen Phase 3: The Resurgent Corsarius.


*For those of you who might be wondering, Phase 1 was The Bare Corsarius (yeah, the usual Minima Black template) and Phase 2 The Brooding Corsarius (red and black, baby).

*****

It’s April 9. Araw ng Kagitingan. And you know what that means.

In commemoration of this deified (reviled) day, I shall allow my face to be finally revealed to those who have not yet seen it.

Ready?

I’m the one on the right.

Yeah, I wish. I’m just freakin’ glad to see the Chicago Bulls back in the playoff hunt. It pays to be a loyalist, I tell you. With the Jordan and Pippen Era long gone, they have managed to charge into the upper echelons once more.

Go Bulls!

*****

Ah well. Enough for now. Good day to you, my friends.

I’ll be back. I promise.

Just this morning, I passed by a public elementary school on the way to the University. Posted on its gate, an official barangay notice read: “Babala. Mapanganib ang lugar na ito.”*

And to add to the stupidity of it all, the school was directly in front of a church.


*In English, “Beware. This is a dangerous place.”

*****

Humans are inherently selfish.**

“Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.” We refrain from inflicting harm upon others just because we’re afraid. Afraid that the all-reaching hand of Karma will seek you and smack down its massive fist on your silly, wicked head as retribution. Afraid that you’ll really pay for that ‘evil thing’ you did. And heck, the concept of Karma itself is both a whip to instill fear into the innate human wickedness and a candy-treat dangled for the pithy human goodness struggling to get out.

Why do you play the part of Mr. (or Ms.) Goody-Two-Shoes, even just from time to time? Oh, I see. So you can get into Heaven or Nirvana or whatever-Elysium-paradise-you-want-to-name. So you can save your ass from the Fires of Hell.

Or being reincarnated as a cockroach.


**Sorry guys. Mebbe I’m wrong here; I’m not out to start a moral (immoral) debate. Just feeling a little nasty today.

******

Bloody scratches.

I’m your typical unsure-if-I’m-an-alpha-male-but-heck-it’s-good- if-I’m-one that perpetually feels the need to have an itch scratched.

I was itching to rise from the murk of my academic performance in the University. And so I strained my arm and scratched my back.

I was itching to live out my passion in journalism amidst computers and mathematics. And so I scratched.

I was itching to be productive and earn a few bucks in my free time. And so I scratched.

I was itching to be finally part of a family, a potent organization in UP. And so I scratched.

I was itching to take a stand in the trends and issues in the IT world — open sourcing and related matters. And so I scratched.

I was itching to mold a brave, determined academic association in its infancy stages. And so I scratched.

Six scratches in one year. Quite a feat, actually.

But the last time I looked at my back on the mirror, I saw blood.

Yes, blood was seeping from my scratches — crimson lacerations inflicted by eager nails, driven by an all-consuming desire…to scratch the itch.

Self-mutilating bastard.


[I want my free time back.]

Who loves fire?

No, not me — you won’t find arsonist tendencies within this writer. Well, I admit that maybe as a kid I had; after all, I used to re-enact the destruction of the Spanish Armada in my bath. I neatly arrayed tens of paper boats into two sides facing each other in the tub. I would then get into a matchstick-lighting spree, throwing the flaming sticks at the boats as if they were darts (Exocet missiles, baby!). In this way I simulated a naval ‘battle’, which only ended once both ‘fleets’ were burnt to the water. I guess who ever emerged ‘triumphant’ in such a battle would’ve had a decidedly Pyrrhic victory.

But when I grew up, here in the urban sprawl where buildings catch fire as easily as men catch the cold virus, I came to fear fire. I came to shun its gleeful destructiveness.

Who loves fire?

I don’t. But I grudgingly respect it. I am in awe of its searing, blazing fury.

An ancient Greek thinker once held fire in the utmost esteem, viewing the element as the origin of all things. Every other substance in the world can be exchanged for fire, and vice versa. If fire can destroy, then fire can forge as well. Out of the crackling, chaotic, eternal flux of the burning flame, order arises.

Quite similar to my personality, as the blog quiz below justly presents (from Blogthings.com):

Your Element Is Fire

Your passion and emotion are as obvious as the brightest flame. You make sparks fly, and your passion always has the potential to burst out. You are exciting and creative - and completely unpredictable. You sometimes exercise control, and sometimes you let yourself go. Friends describe you as sensitive, spirited, and compulsive. Bright and blazing with intensity, you seem mysterious and moody to many.

And, if you’re a role-playing slash fantasy junkie like me, you’ll be interested in the following test:


Find Your Element
mutedfaith.com

[In Tagalog: Sakto!]

What makes a villain?

I believe it’s all relative. There aren’t any clear, delineating marks between what we usually brand as ‘villainous’ traits and the ’saintly’ ones. Decreeing a definition of what is wicked or not for the whole of humanity is like having faith in the existence of the amaranth; it simply doesn’t exist. For example, people like to think (myself included) of Hitler as the penultimate villain in history, but in all probability he might be condescendingly regarding all of us as miscreants in whatever afterlife he’s dragged himself in.

Absurdly enough, talking about ‘villains’ brings to mind the girl which I courted for three years, centuries ago (see my related post). During that awfully-long time, I placed her atop a pedestal, a princess worth my life and much more. (Uh, I guess the ‘much more’ means dozens of short stories and poems, one of which was a five-page ode for her 18th birthday.) But as is cliche for love stories, the pedestal came crashing down one day.

Don’t hate me for this, but I’d be more of a jerk if I won’t admit that she instantly became a villain in my life. At least, just for one or two weeks after she spurned me. And hey, it wasn’t a one-sided deal — I learned that she was growing close with another guy all the time I was trying to win her heart. I unknowingly fulfilled the role of a pest, a devourer of her time, time which she could’ve blissfully spent with the other guy. Maybe I was a demon in her life, too. (Not that it really mattered, because they ended up lovers in the end.)

The day we parted ways was a nadir for our friendship, and at the same time a pinnacle for marking each other as ‘villains’. The villain-stuff wore off as time passed by (at least for me), but unfortunately we haven’t really talked much after that day. We still catch glances of each other in UP, but absolutely no exchange of words, no perfunctory how-are-yous. She only greets my bestfriend, Sophia, who’s with me most of the time.

I tried chatting her up for the first few months or so, but when she wasn’t responding, I quickly got tired and gave up. I’ve moved on, so there’s no reason to waste time trying to initiate a healthy conversation with a person who wants to keep her mouth shut. My friends hazard this silly guess that maybe she’s finding herself guilty for being a one-time villain in my life. They say, after all, she made you cry for three damn years. They say, that’s why she can’t look straight into your eyes.

Really now. I love being the guy that everybody loves to hate, and so I must discard their notion.

She was the heroine, and I was the villain.

*****
And if I’m right about that, then I’m a…

What Type of Villain are You?
mutedfaith.com

Ever since that day, when she pranced laughing into the sunset, leaving me to pick up the pieces, I have remade myself. I’ve become the second coming of Corsarius — more complete, more unforgiving, more efficient than ever before. Focused. Driven. Invincible.

Or so I thought.

Ever since that day, when I began my odyssey of resurgence, I’ve sifted through the rubble, enhancing the strengths, pruning the frailties. All in a quest to become the greatest person one can be. All in a quest to be rid of self-inflicted tragedies. All in a quest to be a bastion of cold, merciless success.

But I lost something in the way.

With the heart in frigid waters, the soul was encased in slumber.

Some people call me a writer. A poet. A weaver of words into vast, majestic tapestries of life’s nuances and life itself. But it is all a lie. A great, cruel fabrication. My words don’t flow freely from the heart. How can they, when their receptacle — the heart — is frozen in some distant universe of false hope? I must force myself to break open the ice, enough to let a trickle of emotion seep through, enough to write a senseless piece of ‘literature’, a mere shadow of past dreams.

True writing isn’t forced, true poetry isn’t a trickle.

Ever since that day, when she pranced laughing into the sunset, when I began my odyssey of resurgence, I lost the power of my soul.

I lost the power of my writing.

And that is the most miserable thing a ‘writer’ can admit to himself.

All because I rid myself of pain. I shielded myself from tragedy. That was my own undoing.

I forgot that with pain comes blood, and blood enlivens the heart, allowing it to be the hearth of dreams, dreams born of tragedy.