Dirty Third World

Wiping dirt off my face and thinking about the dirt covering another strange place, unreachable, here I am closed in, out in the open for the elements to devour, to grow older with each rotation of the sun, metabolizing at death’s door.

Unscrewing the cap off my juice that the dirty child I walk past can’t afford, I say "walang" to his open hand. ’Where are your parents?’, I’m thinking. There’s nothing I can do. At the end of every story is some kind of love to contemplate, I don’t want to learn anymore.

What good is someone’s story untold? There must be angels; there absolutely must be or most stories are for no benefit whatsoever. Everyone lives a metaphor, some kind of similie, a story for nobody, or a story for the third world of angels.

Wiping the dirt from my eyes and not from some place else out of sight, that’s for later- perhaps much later, I cross another third world "street",- it’s the concrete rubble where the motor vehicles speed along. Making room along my pathway for another wretched dog that likely wishes he was dead, I remember the screeching and thumps of suicidal animals that we hear on our "street" every week, more lucky corpses at rest, calling the more fortunate local vermin from their underground world to another meal. They eat well here.

Staring into the third world the glowing television screen offers, turning the channel away from the dirty, I try to clear the dirty from my mind. Another female body for sale, another murder, another scream, another attack, but don’t worry, the cops are on it. I find my clear channels of escape, and others wonder why I want to stare at a bird resting on a placid crisp body of water. It’s heaven somewhere today, in many places. There must be angels there, or are they busy collecting stories?

Astig!

(There are references to MySpace in this entry, because this is a copy and pasted blog entry from that page. If you wanna see my totally awesome myspace page, it's www.myspace.com/jedimasterbooboo)
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Astig!


(Every Filipino anywhere near myspace is going to be in my blog pronto with a title like that.)

So what does astig mean? Well, I might not know exactly, but I can provide some context.

My friends know awhile back I was vexed while correcting exams and on myspace here I put up an update with one of those distressed constipated looking faces, remember? Well I was correcting my sixth grade exams and one after another was just a train wreck. Horrifying. I kept looking at the names on top, 'who is this person, is this person even in my class, did they take the wrong test?'

Well, I discovered that all the crappy tests were on top, that's all. So before I started rethinking my entire teaching strategy, I came upon one that was beyond perfect, and I was elated. I wrote on the test in red pen, "You Rock!" and I don't typically say cheesy things like that, it's not really my style. I was just so happy.

Later, I got a card and a flower from my 6th graders and on the card, it said "You Rock!", ha ha. Then once when I was checking assignments, one student failed to do the essay question, but where the answer was supposed to be, in red pen was this fancy lettering that said "You Rock!", she had really worked on that a long time. I said, this doesn't help you, you still need to answer the question. They're just amazed with that saying.

Anyway, the students are always saying Astig! and then laughing. When we play review games in class and they have to pick team names, one side always picks Astig! and everyone laughs. When they say, Astig, they make that sign with their fingers that's like "love" or "the devil", or something, (I always get those two mixed up). So I asked them, what does Astig mean? The sixth graders didn't really answer to my satisfaction, so I asked my 4th year students...

They laughed at me and said, "It means You Rock!" I guess all the students talk about how I wrote that on Alicen's test (or whoever it was). Word spreads. I remember with the Koreans it was the exact same thing, but that school was so small and the students lived in a dorm together. This was a bit more surprising.

In my second year class I was standing by the whiteboard once and lost my balance and fell over into the room divider, so the whole thing almost broke and swayed back and forth, I said, "that's not a wall". That was a Friday, on Monday in my 4th year class one of the guys said, "Hey that's not a wall, ok?" and pointed to the room divider.

Astig!

I found a photo to steal from flickr...this is nobody I know...That photo was called...Astig!

Yeah, the Hell's Angels Are Always Trying To Get Me, Too

Hell's Angels plotted to kill Mick Jagger in 1969, Yahoo story follows:

Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger escaped an assassination plot hatched in 1969 by the Hells Angels, a new British Broadcasting Corp. documentary has claimed.

A program to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday says the rock star was the target of the plot following a purported dispute with the motorcycle gang over concert security.

Jagger had vowed not to use Hells Angel members as bouncers following the death in December 1969 of an 18-year-old fan at a notorious free performance at Altamont Speedway in Northern California.

In return, gang members hatched a plan to kill Jagger at his holiday home in Long Island, New York, the BBC claimed.

"The Hells Angels were so angered by Jagger's treatment of them that they decided to kill him," Tom Mangold, the presenter of the program, was quoted as telling Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

He said the plan was disclosed during an interview with Mark Young, a former FBI officer, for the BBC's "The FBI at 100" documentary.

Mangold said the men tried to reach Jagger by sea. "The boat was hit by a storm and all of the men were thrown overboard," he was quoted as saying. They all survived but made no other attempt on his life, Mangold said.

It was not clear whether Jagger was ever informed of the alleged plot against him.

LD Communications, Jagger's publicists in Britain, did not immediately return calls requesting comment.

The Hells Angels have always denied any connection with the Altamont Speedway killing.

They tried to get me once, but I borrowed a pair of platform shoes from the barkeep and did a dance on the bartop to the song Tequilla! And after that we were friends. They even gave me a motorcycle to drive away on, right into the sunset! But instead I hit a sign and wound up being rushed to the hospital. Actually that was good, because while confined, I saw some snot nosed kid on tv with my BIKE! So I went and got it and the rest is history.