Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

In most of my ESL classes for my Japanese students, I often try to look for interesting news articles that would make my students focus on learning instead of making me feel their "I'm-bored-is-there-anything-better-to-talk-about" voices on the other line. Anyway, while doing that, I stumbled upon this one when I typed in "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" on Yahoo. I remembered my Engl 11 teacher in freshman year mentioned about men and women having no exact differences other than the biological ones, but I guess, that's too good to be true (haha). It wouldn't be a subject for many relationship self-help books or movies or songs if the only difference between these species is the presence of that something down there which is, yeah, our biological ID.

But going back, this article was submitted by two students named Rebecca and Gary, when their class in Creative Writing required them to pair up and write a story. T'was something like this (to save me from explaining further, after all it's all there, FTW.)

Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to reread what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached. (Well for a much comprehensive presentation, Rebecca's parts are those texts in pink while Gary's are those in blue.)

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel." Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth -- when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow'em out of the sky!"

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.

Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.

You total $*&.

Stupid %&#$!.

OKAY. SO WHAT DID I TELL YOU? LOL. 

Have a good week everyone! 

Another one of my firsts.

Well, we all have our firsts.


First crush, first kiss, first paycheck, first class in kindergarten school where most of us have cried our hearts out seeing our yayas (in my case, my lola) leave as the session starts to begin. We all have important commencements in our lives like our first travel abroad on our own, or first job after college graduation. In conversations with our new-found friends, topics about "firsts" are no-fails. And when we get older, maybe become a grandparent or what-not, we'd tell our little granddaughters about our "first love" or "first date" most probably. It's always like categorized as the "first" and the "others".What I'm trying to point out here is that, in most events in our lives, it is, more often than not, the firsts that we give much significance to, and which remain in our minds, for like, forever.


For example, this blog, is my first-ever.


Oh well, yeah, seriously though, I had a Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogspot, Wordpress, Friendster Blog, and all them blogsites known to humanity since I was 15. But none of these lasted given after a few posts or so. Maybe 10 posts at max. I don't know, maybe it is because of the fact that each of them covered a certain period in my life, of which after all them grains of sand in my hourglass had finally settled beneath, the interest to continue blabbering about new experiences regarding that period has suddenly faded away. Well, if there were new experiences in the first place. For example, my Blogspot was all about my freshmen in college. When I reached my sophomore year, when I wasn't anymore the neophyte greenhorn as I used to be, I'd grimace on some of my previous posts thinking "Did I seriously write that?", with matching contempt for my old self (haha, feeling cooler of course). So at that time, I made my Xanga account. Well, stuff like that. And it became a routine of changing from one blog to another, until it came to a point when the interest for blogging itself has died down. I mean, yeah, I looove writing and stuff, but later on I used my writing prowess in writing the RRL of my thesis instead of blogging about that philosophical thought I had about the manhole as I was riding the jeepney along Bajada. In shorter words, my blogs' expiration dates were because of one thing - CHANGE.


And yeah. This, I guess, is a new period in my life. And I chose Blogger.com for that. But I hope that this time I won't be as fickle-minded as I was with blogs before. Saves me the effort of sorting out good names for my sites.


I'd like to talk more on this subject about blogs and change and all those but I guess the beauty about blogs is that they do not run out of space for me to express my thoughts for the next days. So I'll save them for now so that they'll form part of my ideas for the next ones.


So yeah. This is another one of my firsts. First, for another chapter in my life. Because you know, firsts don't necessarily mean your first experience. You choose your own beginnings. What you decide to be the first, is your very own first.


Anyway, WELCOME TO MY NEW BLOG, "Love, Hegemony and Chocolate Pearlshakes"! Enjoy your stay here and I hope I'd get to shed some of my wisdom (ehem, ehem) with y'all!