(First posted here.)   From Ding and Ferdinand Lancaster’s Search for the Great Uncanny, the hugely popular life blog maintained by Keebs, sidekick and partner-in-crime to trail-blazer and all-around it-man Danilo Bustamante, posted March 20, 2008: This is why strange girls rock. (cue in: kickass guitar riffs) Dude #1 (big man on campus) spends the…

(First posted here.) “Take for instance the seemingly inconsequential decision Keta makes outside the mock interview doors,” sabi ko kay Keebs. “I hate adverbs. They load words unnecessarily.” “And you would’ve made a stronger point by not using one,” sabi ko, quick to catch the slip. “Still. Continue.” I was demonstrating my powers to Keebs since this morning and so far have not been able to get my point across. This power to see the ramifications of people’s choices…

(First posted here.) Dante was staring at the lighted cigarette stick in his hand. And then, in a moment of lucidity he realized what he was doing. “Shit.” The vendor at the lagoon was taken aback at the expletive, having sold him the aformentioned cigarette just seconds before. “I don’t smoke,” Dante said. The vendor…

(First posted here.) Nirvana and I had just finished telling a freshman that we once smuggled some geese from the lagoon and into the BA library and was going to ask the neophytes to retrieve one come second sem. The truth is even stranger. We routinely smuggled geese from the lagoon as some sick competition about…

(First posted here.) In Which Dante Wonders Whether He Will Die   Part of me knew none of me was dry, or was ever going to be dry by the time this night ended. But I’ve been holding Nirvana’s hand for the last thirty minutes and could not let go. “You know how this ends,…

(First posted here.) On the matter of {ria}. It’s the name she responds to, the name Nirvana calls her. But I’m pretty sure I never really heard the girl’s name or never really understood the sounds and letters Nirvana uses when actually speaking it. {ria} The sound, either an exaggerated sigh or a full-bodied incantation,…

(First posted here.) I get schizophrenia, somehow. It’s when the sounds of memories and dreams and fabricated scenarios dance around direct experience and merge, cross over, overlap. It’s hearing, tasting, smelling, seeing things that are not supposed to be in this plane of reality. When I get these mental blips, I get not only other people’s…

(First posted here.) Behold the monomyth, Keebs thought as Dante grabbed the keys to the Adventure and strode out of their living room with the weight of the world gone at last. He wondered whether he should come, whether this was something a guy without Dante’s total disregard of his own life could manage. He…

(First posted here.) I’m cheating. I’m on a date with a girl I met in Humanities. This is not going to work, not really. This thing felt forced, desperate, even, when I’m really just playing this stupid mind game by myself. “Well, so you know those hot air balloons in Subic?” the girl was saying.…

(First posted here.) I could almost see the standard issue pitch-black wings erupting from Ramon’s back in between blinks. But there were none, of course, just the laid-back stance of a battle-hardened mercenary moving in for a minor kill. I am the aforementioned minor kill. “What are your dreams about, Dante?” He hugged the mug…