Just a little note before I drop off to sleep, which hasn’t been easy lately, what with the caffeine running through my veins. I’ve discovered that you can keep yourself sufficiently mentally altered without resorting to illegal drugs. All you need is caffeine and alcohol, really, your basic upper and downer, respectively, and if you’re really desparate for a hallucinogen, you could always go with dextromethorphan (to paraphrase Chris Rock, love that ‘Tussin), although I haven’t tried that yet. I have enough mental problems as it is, thank you very much.

Like, take for instance, this dream I had a few days ago. Of course, I was typing in a story for the maganda machine archive entitled “The Aswang of Las Vegas” by Steve Dorado (incidentally revealing that I am not the first Filipino American who has ever been attracted to the genre of Fantasy and Science Fiction), so it wasn’t completely out of the blue. But in any case, I dreamt that an army of aswang was chasing me, and that I ran into Satan himself, who was in the guise of Joseph Ejercito Estrada (affectionately called Erap). I’m afraid that I might have made a deal with him, but unfortunately I can’t remember what it was. Oh well. What can I do. I’m probably going to hell anyway.

But I tell you, for some ironic reason, nothing can pull me out of my perverse/perverted thoughts like talking to a pretty girl. I have made a silly Lenten promise which has severely affected my mental health and which I will not speak of at this moment. Times like this I appreciate the fine line between love and schizophrenia.

In any case, my corneas have been dry all week from continuously staring at a computer monitor, as I’ve rushed to finish my third of the 20% that we are planning to put online. I couldn’t have done it without Abiword and its neat little feature of being able to mass convert files on the command line.

I also finally finished Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline and found out that Celine was an anti-Semite, but, hey, what can you do. All my heroes (and probably all your heroes too) have fatal flaws. José Rizal was an elitist who despised the uneducated. Abraham Lincoln was a white supremacist. Werner Heisenberg and Robert Oppenheimer were lackeys for their respective governments. Kip Thorne and Stephen Hawking love porno. Let ye who art without sin… and all that jazz. Céline has allowed me to accept how ugly the world as without having to commit suicide. So no more idealistic crusades for me. Although I do like the idea of not being too attached to life. Attachments are such burdens…

It’s clear to me that my mind is not in tip-top shape these days. I haven’t gotten out much. Ah well. Who needs human contact anyway?