Glass slippers and pumpkin cars

It's funny how little girls get treated like royalty. Princesses, shades of pink, a tiara and a ballgown, all those sparkly and glittery jazz. But as she grows, the poor little princess begins to realize that life does not end in 'happily ever after'. She removes her tiara, steps down from her throne, and removes her ballgown (!!!) to reveal her usual, normal-person dress.

In a snap, her shiny coach goes back into a pumpkin, and her servants become nothing more than rats. She does her normal activities, studying, sleeping, working. Aside from the things she has to do to keep herself alive, there's nothing new happening. It's the same thing every day.

Our princess gets trapped in the realm of drudgery, as she deals with unpaid credit card balances, academic pressure, and the stress of the workplace. She curses the weather for being too extreme, her boss for being too much of a jerk, and her family for being indifferent to her feelings. She envies those people who has real friends. She goes home with a sigh, she drags herself to school. This is her life.

Every once in a while, she puts on her tiara and pretends it's all going to be alright. She pretends that she can get everything with the snap of a finger, that she can get a good laugh from the court jester. She gives orders here and there, pampering herself with the royal benefits of being a princess.

The microwave oven beeps and she snaps back to her misery. And somewhere, somehow, she hopes that somebody has her slipper.

10 Minutes of Funny

Go to YouTube, search for "America's Funniest Home Videos". You'll have like, 10 minutes of funny.

That's what my coworker said to his brother, in the middle of some conversation about some topic I already forgot. Apparently, YouTube has obviously gone to the point where you can get "10 minutes of funny" anytime. It has become the Big Brother of the Internet.

I went to the site just to get some 10 Minutes of Anti-Boredom and I ended up clicking Recommended Video after Recommended Video and what was 10 Minutes of Procrastination became 10 Minutes of Cyber-Eavesdropping. I was basically taking a glimpse out of random people's lives, knowing what they know, feeling what they feel. It was 10 Minutes of Empathy and 10 Minutes of Learning.

YouTube has changed the way people's lives are nowadays. It is in these videos that we take a look at an alternate side of life, something other than ours, something other than the people, places, and events we know. In our 10 Minutes of Discovery, we become shocked at girls throwing a bucket of puppies down rivers, we laugh at obese guys in glasses lip-synching to pop songs by O-Zone, we are amazed by kinda-old people hitting the perfect notes of a Les Miserables song.

It is in these 10 Minutes of Connectedness that we become aware of the world, we learn something, cry at something, or find something so cute we squeeze our computer screen while squealing. YouTube has become a proof that the Internet is more than a network of cables exchanging data; it has become a storage of memories, those that display emotions, passion, and reason. It is a link not between two computers but between the people sitting in front of them. 10 Minutes of Freedom is what we see, a collaborative collection of life's milestones or stumbling blocks, a constantly-changing mosaic of voices from all over the world showing how good or bad it is to live. It is 10 Minutes of Experiences on the Internet.

YouTube has become a real success, getting my attention and actually delving in quite deep thought about it. And after all, after being drenched in all of the day's work, all we need is 10 Minutes of Funny.

Pentameter

Now here's a challenge I impose myself
To write in the pentameter's the test
I actually don't know how to write such
A poem that restricts me for all too much.

An iambic pentameter I'll write,
Should have 10 syllables on every line.
And that of alternating accent too,
Through high and low, I'll switch between the two.

Now there, you have two stanza's worth of poem.
Like unicorns that feed on rainbow bowls.
I know the line above is plain nonsense,
I just wrote that to keep the measure checked.

Now here's a poem. I dare say that it is.
If you're not convinced, look back what you missed:
I mentioned measures, unicorns, 'n shit
And managed to get 10 syllables each.

Waha-haha. I did it with success.
With flying colors, I passed my own test.
Writing iambic pentameter's cool
Try it sometime, you'll really shine at school.

Haiku #2: "Autumn"

So guys, here's the plaintext.

This is the second haiku in this blog. I made it while watching the leaves fall outside during our oh-so-boring Archaeology class. Nothing much interesting today, just some leaves. And more leaves.

leaves are falling
the wind blows them to my face
holy shit.

Reverse stalking

So guys, here's the plaintext.

I just finished scouring the web for any information about some person I want to know more. Didn't work. Frustrated by this failure, I ended up Googling myself, which is the technological equivalent of looking at a mirror for hours on end.

I am satisfied by the results. I deliberately morphed my online identity so as not to be searchable in Google. I hide behind famous names or make up unique, uncommon ones. However, this blog is an exception. A quick search for Leonard Lagasca got this blog as the first hit. Well duh. This is Blogger, a Google product. But still.

I'm actually wondering whether I should give out this blog's URL to people I know around here in Saskatoon. It's personal, but not as personal as my Facebook page, to which I only have a few friends.

I am undecided. But oh well. Time will tell. Oh and by the way, I'm about to spit out a slew of those cryptic blogposts I have been notorious for during my high school days tomorrow. Here's a crappy haiku to end my night:

I held the blade
just before the phone rang
you saved me.

Writer's Block

So guys, here's the plaintext.

Me in front of the PC

It's my school. I have to submit a "university-level" essay about the analysis of some short story. And guess what. I have fucking nothing to write about. Absolutely nothing.

Don't you just hate it when writer's block hits you at just the right time; that is, when you definitely need some written output? I don't hate it, I loathe it. Every bit of it. I don't know what caused this block, maybe it's because I actually only made a "university-level" paper during my high school days (with all those MLA citations and shit) to make what my high school teachers call a mock thesis, with the presupposed objective of preparing us for college.

It did not help because what we just did was to insert parenthetical remarks here and there with a random author's name inside it. Also, we were not graded with justice; they just marked it and didn't even provide specific pointers if we did it right or wrong. I don't even know if they checked our Works Cited list; we got away with random book names by random authors. We even cited Wikipedia as a source.

The mock thesis we had in high school was horrible. Citing Wikipedia, inserting parentheses here and there (Lagasca 2010), and messing around with complex words for simple ideas are not good things to do in a university-level essay. No. That shit's not going down.

So here I am with the oh-so-common scene of staring at a blinking cursor on a blank screen. Maybe tomorrow, when I get to the library's carrels, some research writing spirit will come to me and make me finish my essay in one go. Oh and before I close, pardon my vulgarities in this blogpost: I'm practicing my colloquial English. Shit.

Break the barrier

So guys, here's the plaintext.

It's not me. It's my awkward way with words, the way I handle the spoken language, that sets me apart from these people.

I just arrived from my job, and today's bunch was extremely different. What was a group of people in their mid-20s to 30s on the weekends I worked was replaced by a group of guys (and girls) in the 10th or 11th grade. I was like, "WHOAH, BUDDY!"

So, there I was, sitting next to these high schoolers who were 3, maybe 5 months more tenured than me. There were 7 people from somewhere in the Middle East I guess and brothers from I have no idea where (surname's Nguyen, and their names are Western, so I'm not that sure), who I reckon grew up here, the way they spoke English without inflections or accents. Maybe my inference that they grew up here could be extended to the prediction that they were actually born here, given their Western first names.

It struck me hard. I'm surrounded by people who speak English naturally, and yet it's not their lingua franca. I tried speaking to them but most of the time I end up repeating myself, which I hate. So I'll try to act like the college guy who speaks on occasion.

But no. That's not me. I've got a lot of stories to tell and hell would I tell them if I could. Right now I'm just disappointed that unlike how I shine in English class a while ago (I was the constant arm-raiser, but maybe it's just my classmates are still too shy), I suck at speaking the language. So bad. Makes me wonder though how my British friend manages to understand every word I'm saying. Maybe it's a perception thing. Maybe my speech patterns lean more towards the British accent (Funny story: On the voice chat feature of an online game, I was actually asked if I was a "12-year-old Australian kid or something" when they heard me speak. I don't know if I should be flattered or annoyed by that.)? I don't know.

I decide I need more practice. I could not just get perfect spoken English overnight; I need to suffer a few days (years?) of being misunderstood. Just like in DDR where I had to suck before I could rock.

I sip my apple cider one last time and go to sleep.