Third World Writer

Well, that’s over.

I just came from fixing a bug in my system. A few months ago my Logic and Reasoning Module (LRM) reported a discrepancy, owing to a conflict with the Emotions and Desires Module (EDM). This discrepancy messed with my system’s energy configuration, setting Drive and Inspiration levels dangerously low, almost triggering the Enditall sequence.

The LRM’s conflict with the EDM was no small thing. It seems the EDM was not programmed with a failsafe for extreme inputs, so that absurdly large quantities of unexpected data can cause it to overload. Apparently, overloading the EDM causes the LRM to shut down, or suspend temporarily, exacerbating the situation. Note that the LRM is needed to balance the EDM, so either the EDM needed a failsafe, or the LRM needed to be robust enough to balance the overloaded EDM. (Although frankly, I think the EDM should have been developed in a manner that prevents overload situations.)

The fix I implemented is still being tested, so I’m not entirely sure it will work. But for the most part the EDM input has been controlled, to some extent, so the LRM is able to manage the EDM’s processing. So far the LRM has resumed making Sense.

As for the circumstances that led to the EDM’s overload, I’m running a number of scenarios through the LRM to diagnose the cause. It’s been approximately a decade since such dangerous levels of EDM activity have been observed, back when the LRM was still being developed, so the LRM hasn’t been yet configured to mitigate such instances. With this recent recurrence, perhaps I can upgrade the LRM accordingly. I’ll have to check.

For the meantime, I’m glad that’s over. I’ve executed the recovery sequence, which will take a while to complete, but by next year Frank_v2.0 should be up and running again. Until then I’m limiting input to the EDM while tweaking what I can of the LRM, while once in a while purging the cache with less energy-intensive modules like flash_games and facebook_apps. It’s tedious work, but crap like this needs doing.

Damn bugs.

I miss writing. These past months I’ve been staring at empty windows of notepads, typing words without meaning, phrases without depth and paragraphs full of gibberish. And then I hit Ctrl + A + Delete, more than once, to hide the fact that this is all I have become. Meaningless, shallow, garbage.

All day in the office I do nothing. All day at home I do nothing. Between sleeping, commuting and all the hours of nothing that I do, I wonder where I’m going.

Am I lost? Or is there simply nowhere to go?

I wish God had given me a better map.

The one I have doesn’t say where “here” is.

I’m no good at these things called birthdays. I never know what to do about them. I’m a year older. A year closer to my death. And I’m supposed to blow out some candles?

Like small talk, haggling, praying and speaking tagalog, birthdays are one of those things that any given average person does better than I. Happiness and cheer aren’t my strong points, so I find it difficult to feel excited about being a year older.

Rather, I feel a little disappointed. As a kid I figured being grown up meant knowing all The Answers to all The Questions I could think of. I figured perhaps when I turned 25 I’d suddenly have an epiphany and everything would make sense, like God opened up the skies and threw a User’s Manual to Life v1.0 right in front of me. But 25 came and went, no epiphany, no User’s Manual, no Answers.

The Questions just pile up.

While I don’t exactly celebrate birthdays, I do have a little routine for the Sixth of August. I write, I read about Nuclear Weapons, and I do a little something to try and make my day a little better than normal. I guess that means birthdays don’t mean absolutely nothing to me. I don’t know.

Wait, did I say Nuclear Weapons? Indeed I did.

It probably comes with being born on the Sixth of August, the day Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, but I’ve read almost everything I could get my hands on about Nuclear Weapons, and they scare me terribly. It’s difficult enough trying to picture 70,000 people – I don’t know how far away I’d have to stand to see everyone – but it’s even harder trying to imagine them dead. All of them, dead in an instant. And these are the ones who didn’t suffer.

Nowadays, nuclear warheads are measured by how many Hiroshimas they can decimate. And with the introduction of MIRVs, nuclear missiles are measured by how many warheads they can carry. One Hiroshima is 70,000 people dead instantly, 70,000 more by radiation poisoning. One warhead is ten hiroshimas. One MIRV can carry ten warheads, for ten different targets. The math is easy. (70,000 + 70,000) * 10 * 10 people killed by a single launch button.

It’s difficult enough trying to picture so many people.

Every Sixth of August, I reaffirm my opinion: Nuclear Weapons are a Crime Against Humanity.

–

For my birthday, zee gave me a fountain pen, and I’ve decided, I love fountain pens. They’re a little expensive, but I think they’re worth the investment, if you like pens. And I’m addicted to them. =)

(Ah, but there are so many different kinds!)

It doesn’t take much to make me happy. A couple of Reese’s ( swore off them, but today’s an exception, I think), a litre of chocolate milk (of which I am a little intolerant), some cheap art materials from National Bookstore.

If anyone ever thinks of getting me gifts, I highly recommend art materials. And yes, a video cam does count as art materials. =)

My projects for the rest of this year:
2 songs
2 paintings
1 short video (at least 10 minutes)

Plus one attempt at NaNoWriMo’s 50,000 words. Hm, I don’t have a story idea yet..

–

Huh. I never knew there was so much fun to be had with a tiny jar of poster paint, a pack of index cards and a cheap bamboo brush.

Before I knew it, I actually had a happy birthday. =)

Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds. This phenomenon has been remarked by all those finding themselves in the same conditions as myself for observing what happens after the severing of the neck…

I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased. [...] It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: ‘Languille!’ I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions – I insist advisedly on this peculiarity – but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts.

Next Languille’s eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves. I was not, then, dealing with the sort of vague dull look without any expression, that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks: I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me. After several seconds, the eyelids closed again[...].

It was at that point that I called out again and, once more, without any spasm, slowly, the eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time. Then there was a further closing of the eyelids, but now less complete. I attempted the effect of a third call; there was no further movement – and the eyes took on the glazed look which they have in the dead.^[source]

I am back in an office, business as usual, and I am reminded of a lot of things I would rather forget.

The smell of cigarettes much too early in the morning, a blanket of smoke and smokers blocking the entrance to my office building. I want to douse them in gasoline and watch them ignite themselves. They smell like a thousand farts and breaths of halitosis.

The taste of a 7-eleven breakfast. The solitude of lunch. The tick-tock that my computer’s clock doesn’t make as it counts down the minutes until I’m free to leave this seat, this building, this lung-cancerous city.

If all the people in the world holding a cigarette at this very moment fell dead.. would you mind?

I’ve memorized the rhythm of the train pulling into a station. Ta-ka tug dug, ta-ka tug dug, ta-ka tug-dug… stop. Doors open. People push. Doors close. Again and again and again.

Doors close.

Ah. Once again I find myself with quite a bit of time on my hands. This economic downturn thing is getting really annoying. Hm. I guess I’ll take up jogging again.

*sigh~~~*

Oh well.

Sh. It Happens.

After a [few] afternoon classes and morning masses, I feel like I’m able to sign a whole lot of things [already]. [Enough] to [communicate] at least. So to test myself, and to improve my [vocabulary], as I write the words on this [entry], I’ll [mark] the words I don’t know how to sign with [brackets] and maybe ask a Deaf kid how to sign them later. Everything else I [should] be able to sign, [although] signing things word-for-word is not very [advisable]. You have to sign the meaning of the sentences to be better understood, removing the unneeded words and including only the [main] ones.

Haha, this is fun, it’s like I have a [wide] [vocabulary] of signs, when [really], this is very simple English. It’s like [simple.wikipedia.org], where sentences are so short and simple that [even] a gradeschooler [would] understand.

This month our class will be having our evaluations. Because I’ll be going to Cebu for my brother and sister’s graduations, I won’t be here for the evaluation, so I’ll have to [take] the test early, which is a little [scary]. I’ll also have to sign an [entire] song for Ma’am Beth, our evaluator. I chose [Gary V's] “Gaya ng Dati”, but [might] change it later on if I [find] a better song. (Thanks to [tutor] Anne for teaching the signs to the words!)

Classes on Saturdays and exposures on Sundays are fun. I learn a lot of things that I don’t [really] need to learn (I [took] up Sign Language on a [whim], after all), but I have a lot of fun learning them. Also, last Sunday I signed “Holy, Holy” in church for the Deaf people, and they told me after that I was very red up in [front]. ^_^; I haven’t [turned] red [since] high school, I think. That was [embarrassing]. >.< And they [might] [even] make me do it again! >.

Being [around] Deaf people, you [realize] how [deprived] they are [growing] up, not understanding their parents, not knowing their [own] names, not being a part of the world going on [around] them. But the one thing I can’t help but think about every day, the one thing that I [find] very sad, is that they live in a world without music. All the other things I [mentioned] are hard to [relate] to, hard to [imagine] one’s self in those [situations]. But music is a large part of my life, so when I [imagine] a world without [violins] and [pianos] and [flutes] and [kokia], I feel the world [shrinking], getting smaller and smaller until it’s [unbearable]. A world without music is [scary].

[Ah], I have a lot of words to learn.

Yesterday was an interesting day at the office — people wearing blood-red clothes, women holding bouquets like they validated their self-worth, and men scrambling to buy chocolates and flowers from the makeshift shop at the cafeteria. There seems to be a season of celebration in the air. I found it interesting. I didn’t know so many people celebrated Friday the 13th.

Or were they perhaps celebrating this “Valentine’s Day” I keep hearing about. It can’t be. That sort of thing went out of style back in high school.

Valentines is for people who have forgotten how to be in love. As my roommate put it, some people need to be reminded. What is most unfortunate, though, is that their chosen form of expression is something utterly predictable, and even expected. How does one expect something expected to make someone happy?

Chocolates I can understand. I mean, you can’t argue with chocolates. But flowers confound me. Do women use them to enhance the beauty of their surroundings? Do they carry them around all day to proclaim, “Hey, someone loves me enough to.. give me flowers on this day where boys are expected to give girls flowers for no other reason than it’s just that day of the year..” Huh? I’m confused.

This day of hearts is actually both sweet and sad. It’s sweet when you see a girl with a single rose beaming with delight, clinging lovingly to her boyfriend’s arm because he gave her a flower. And it’s sad when you see a girl with a single rose beaming with delight, clinging lovingly to her boyfriend’s arm because he gave her a flower.

I mean, it’s a flower. All it does is die.

 - girl, woman, lady, able, other, another, any, with, daily/always, tomorrow, address, ahead, audiology/gist, follow, far, ache, continue, pass, each, every, self, act, behind, remember, remind, forget, near, next, for, letter, fine, reader, example, try, part, hand shapes, review, absent, yes, no, maybe, lesson, still, week, true, false, lie, excuse, please, start, wait