slivers.of.thought

At the start of the semester, I'll admit, I was expressly warned by my friends and random stranger people that Avcla's class would be hell. There were only one or two people who told me they enjoyed his class. But they're almost not human so they don't count.

It really was stressful. It was. Even if he had many interesting kuwentos during lectures. Like, about his frat and his brods and his radio-announcer-past and his disillusionment with the legal system or how he wants our President dead and how he isn't gay and how he hates Jews and thinks African Americans should be slaves and that he isn't racist, he's just "ultranationalist". I mean he can narrate a 1950s thriller episode with feeling. He even knows the damn dialogue up to the last punctuation.

I asked him if he has a photographic memory once. He looked at me wierd then said airily, "I can't memorize everything. Maybe 90 percent."

Being his seatmate, I had my fair share of physical abuse. The first time was when he slapped my wrist when I kept adjusting the rubber bands holding my rolled up cartolinas cause I was reporting that day. Imagine five heavy rubber sausages slapping your wrist.
Practically every other meeting, though, when he tries to fit himself into the average tablet chair and his body fat just can't be accommodated so as he sits down the adjacent chairs get pushed in my general direction and I end up getting squished. The last time was during finals when we were watching the films he had as scout for (hard to find, i tell you) and he wanted subtitles but we couldn't get to put on the subtitles so he started getting angry and frustrated and threatening and red and infantile, he whacked me on the shoulder with the jacket cover of "Cassandra Crossing." I have a bruise right there now.

and then there was the emotional/psychological/verbal abuse of course. For my first report, he called me a space cadet cause I kept on spacing out at his questions. Then after New Year's when he wanted to see who gained the most holiday weight, he looked at me and pointed "You! Look, your clothes don't fit you anymore!" But I didn't gain weight.. I checked. *denial*
Then he always made fun of the fat girl in class. I once overheard him ask her, "Are you afraid of the big bad wolf? He'll huff and he'll puff and he'll blow your house down." [i.e. 'are you a pig?']
She giggled and shot back, "No sir, our house is made of bricks."
Or when he basically called our class projects crap and told us all to repeat his class next semester. I pray he was joking.

If you don't polish up on your grammar and diction, you're screwed for sure. He'll call you an Atenean (which is his vilest insult) and ask you how you ever got into UP in the first place.

He has his moments, though, when everyone might think he actually has a soul.
Like when he sang opera in his little shindig "Diliman Classics" and everyone thought he looked so "cuuuuuuuute, ang sarap tirisin!!!!!!"
Or when he said he was very impressed with my report and thought my game was innovative.
Or when he released our 'phantom' from his phantomhood.
Or when he noticed I wasn't eating the food our judges brought to class to complement our movie watching experience, and he asked me, "Why aren't you eating? Are you on a diet?" I said yes.
"Well, it's not working. Kumain ka."
I choose to take that as a sign of concern for my well being... or maybe not.

Basically, everything people say about him is true. Like the notorious keep-us-till-midnight-for-our-finals thing or the matching-type- test-but-with-three-hundred-frickin-choices-to-choose-from thing or the he-may-or-may-not-be-gay-but-try-to-figure-it-out thing.

All in all I am just so f***ing glad my class with him is over. After emerging from that classroom, cold, scathed, feeling a bit like I just got tortured for three months and didn't know it till then; but still alive, I swear I wanted to cry. hahaha.

And the moral lesson of this story is: when people expressly tell you not to enroll in someone's class and they have this grave and urgent expression on their faces while they tell you so, chances are they know what they're talking about.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

dis lenten sison

Friday, April 07, 2006

Out of Killer Polar Bear Country