NaNoWriMo

In accordance with piece-of-advice #3 from the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) intiation email, I am notifying the world that I will be writing a novel during the course of November. I will start on the 1st, stop on midnight of the 30th, and somewhere during the course of the 30 days, I will write 50,000 words of something that will be at least pure garbage. Piece-of-advice #3 says that if I flake out at any time, you have permission to deem me pathetic and to express that opinion freely. Yes, yes, I know, with this blog's three-billion+ readers I will be reading praise-brimming comments till November 2030, but what the hell, I'll take that chance. Other people who have put November to NaNoWriMo's sacrificial altar include Natasha...yea, Natasha. However, if someone decides that they could use a thirty-day-long kick in the balls, I would be glad to oblige. ...And also they should sign up for NaNoWriMo.

Tomorrow is Halloween, and the Mendiolas + extended family are having a party. I have been invited as the token "friend," which says a lot about the Mendiola's and their standards for friends. Then again, look at Mario, and you'll wonder about their standards for family. Anyway, Ben, Daniel, Mario and I have been ordered to dress up as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Daniel and Ben are in charge of supplies, Mario and I are to put the costumes together. I have more faith in my novel-writing abilities than in my costume-building skills so disappointment is inevitable. At least we won't be disappointed with that.

On a low note, food is running low. I finished off three boxes of grape nuts today, each having only those crumbs at the bottom that are always left until all the boxes full of full-fledged grape nut chunks have been devoured. The fridge is nearly empty, in accordance with moneysaving rule #2: "never shop until you've eaten everything in the refrigerator and licked the racks clean (Note: do not lick the inside of the freezer, or you might find out why you shouldn't have done it)." There's an egg or so, but those will be today's dinner, along with the remnants of the Angel Food. Yes, believe it or not, there's still Angel Food left over, though my previous comments on its quality render this fact unsurprising. Mostly we've been prefering oatmeal in large quantities, and so far nothing has proven to be as filling/$ as the tubs we buy biweekly. Once the oatmeal and the Angel Food are gone though (later today), we'll have to resort to ancient wisdom to keep our bellies full. I'm having trouble deciding between D'Artagnan's: "He who sleeps, eats," and the Russian: "A ton of water replaces a kilogram of bread."

The Wonderful World of Mucus

If you don't want to read about mucus coming out of various orifices of my body, stop reading now.

Over the last few days, my sickness has summoned vast amounts of mucus to aid in its quest to torture me. The current trend is a steady migration upwards through my body. If this journey continues in similar fashion, the story of my malady may get a whole lot more interesting.

Two days ago, my throat was my only enemy, and I frequently cleared it, spewing yellowish globs wherever I happened to have been aiming. Yesterday, my nose joined in on the game, and I found myself with two more nozzles to spray out of, and as trigger-happy as a Clint Eastwood movie. Today, the mucus has completed a leg of the journey and resides almost solely in my nose. Unfortunately, due to my severe case of JAD (Jammed Attention Disorder - the inability to switch attention quickly), I often find myself stripping off headphones and guitars and catching drips Mission Impossible style, i.e. nanoseconds before they hit the floor. But this is irrelevant. What's bothering me is where this mucus is heading next. "Ear-nose-throat" I hear are connected, so I may soon be blowing my ears (I've been practicing all day). And after my ears have succumbed, what next? In the worst case, I'll be blind for a while, but in the best, I may have a imminent cure for my dandruff problem.

Angel Food Update

Part of the Angel Food is 10 prepackaged frozen meals (The Senior Citizen Special). The meals are in plastic boxes, and have three compartments - main course, greens, and a mystery compartment which has so far included garlic bread, applesauce and boiled carrots. The quality of these meals, so far, has a very high variance.

The first tested the limits of edibility. It was advertised as "Chicken in Barbecue Sauce, Greens, and Applesauce." After consuming a large part of it, I was convinced that it was in fact "Barbeque Sauce with a Splash of Chicken, Something Green That Normally Isn't, and an Applesauce/Previous Mystery Green Stuff Infusion."

Five days later, when my hunger overpowered my discouragement, I selected another prepackaged meal at random. The label read "Parmesan Chicken, Greens and Garlic Bread." Once again, I was surprised, but this time, pleasantly. The chicken was tender, the pasta tasted like pasta, and the garlic bread...well it was pretty much a glorified cracker that didn't even smell like garlic. But on the whole, my low expectations combined with the meal's adequacy produced pure delight. The greens were still inedible, but looked vaguely bean-ish. That was yesterday.

Today, the third meal was opened, this time by Mario. It was "Roast Beef, The Inevitable Greens, and Boiled Carrots." He started off with the main course, replying "eh" when I asked him if it was good. He was almost done when I suggested he try the greens so that he would have something edible to wash it down with in case they proved again to be unpalatable. He grabbed a good forkfull of greens and bravely shoved it in his mouth. His face immediately turned upside down. The greens were apparently the only part of the meals that guaranteed consistency. After the initial surge of facial turmoil, Mario put on a very serious face and sat motionless. I ventured a guess: "are you trying to swallow?" He nodded dumbly, and continued to sit there. I could feel his gag reflex throwing a fit all the way across the table. To help him, I started laughing at him as hard as I could. It was a battle of pride against the body's instincts, and was almost up to Stephen Chow physical comedy standards. Finally he gave up and spit it back out into the greens compartment. Poor guy, he should have swallowed. Now I'll have to remind him of this failure every day of his life.

Wo jianzai

Celebrated a few birthdays with some drinking at our place the other day. There must of been something extra special in the drinks because Mario was experiencing weird effects. We had the following two conversations at the peak of inebriation:

Mario (chewing a piece of gum): dude, my senses are so powerful, I can taste that piece of chicken you're eating from all the way over here.
Me (demolishing a piece of fried chicken): what does it taste like?
Mario (gets a bearing on his long-distance taste buds): ...gum.

(a little later)

Mario (still chewing gum): dude, my brain...I don't think anyone can understand what's going on in my brain right now. It's amazing.
Me: psh, I bet I can. Summarize it in two words.
Mario: Gum... ... ... ...good.

Nevermind, that sounds pretty much like the effects of alcohol.

I've been watching some Chinese movies lately, namely The Chinese Odyssey Part I & II. It's pretty glorius slapstick. There's lots of crotch humor, which is apparently as funny in China as it is in the United States. It must be some kind of genetically grounded reflex, like a mental kneejerk - when a man's crotch gets kicked, punched, set on fire, hit with a combination of gravity and tree branch, etc., you MUST laugh. And since I must, I did. A lot. Of course there can only be so much vicariously experienced pain before habituation sets in, but the movies threw in a good measure of other guaranteed laugh-elicitors - unibrows, horrible special effects, cross-dressing, and funny phrases like "Boyo Bolomi!"

I downloaded some more singing-training material. According to the latest, in five weeks I will no longer sound like a creaking door being slaughtered, or if I do, it will be as much as an octave higher than currently.

I've also been learning lots of Chinese lately by chatting with Chinese girls on various continents. Hmm, thought I had more to say about this...