supah suprize

I was asked once if I like surprises.

I said, it depends. See, there are good surprises and bad surprises. Two points if you can guess which one I prefer.

The good surprises are the ones that involve candy and chocolate covered chocolate wrapped neatly in bows and stuffed into your Christmas stocking. The really good surprises are those that have the words "money" and "lots" in them.

The bad surprises are those that happen at those stupid holiday parties when you find your boy-friend in a closet with a tart dressed as Santa's ho-ho-ho and having a really merry Christmas. And then the shocking (bad) surprise is finding out afterwards that the ho-ho-ho aforementioned boy-friend was spooning with was, in fact, a man.

The good surprises are usually the ones that make Mom laugh, Dad (gasp) smile and everyone else feel nice and all hearts-and-flowers-y. Like when friends drop by unexpectedly. The ones that involve balloons and people jumping maniacally from beneath the furniture. The ones that don't involve nasty accidents, ill-timed phone calls, foreboding prophecies or deviations from The Plan.

When you ask a professor when your C120 final exam is, and he says, "It's a surprise! :-)", he doesn't mean it like Oprah does, wanting to change your life and be part of her book club forever. He must mean he's doing a Jerry-Springer-type surprise on you, wanting to ruin your family and have a fist-fight ensue in the near future.

When a stray cat saunters off your yard like Naomi Campbell and your Mom says, "Ooh, looks like it left a surprise!" It sure as hell ain't a new kitty.

I don't want to be surprised so much as be taken off guard. It takes a fair amount of contingency planning, like an umbrella to possible rain showers or a Swiss Army knife (and jungle survival skills) on an unplanned sojourn into the woods.

But then, being wary of the cosmos forever throwing "surprises" at you with a sick, sadistic sense of humor won't allow for those few, rare, precious moments of genuinely nice surprises.

Like an extension on a looming deadline, or a hundred bucks crumpled on the sidewalk where you stroll home.

Or, possibly, like seeing your ex around campus with his new puny-ass girlfriend in tow. She may not have size, but she must be bendy. and docile. and... pleasant.


Haven't decided yet if that last one's a good surprise or a bad surprise.

Two points if you can help me decide.

necking with a bird

Found this picture when we went to the zoo a few years back. My Mom thought it was cute that I was branching out a little, you know, what with spooning with a parrot and all.

the loser factor

on the rainy day when god showered blessings and handed out talents to everyone, it was my good fortune to receive the knack for losing things. It's like, a gift.

Like, Give me an elephant tied by a chain to my neck and looped around my inner thigh, with a homing device and alarm attached to my eardrum and I would still lose it.

I lost countless toys, countless papers of importance including my birth certificate. [News flash. i was never born.]

When my boyfriend gave me a bracelet for that ridiculous moment that was our "monthsary", I managed to lose it two hours later on a trip to the bathroom. When my dad gave me a palmtop as a fatherly gift of random affection, someone stole it from my desk in the dorm. When my parents gave me a new phone for a stellar academic performance that year, I lost it a month later. And you know what? I just left it on a bench at the film center. Just, FORGOT.

I cannot count all the clothes I've lost, or the money, or the wallets, or the sanity. I almost, almost, almost lost my little brother at the mall. I found him at the lost and found bin at Home Depot. Apparently, I'm pretty good at losing people too.

I'm not good at crises, including last minute realizations that I have lost something and can't find it. I'm very good at hyperventilating. And crying. I also have an amazing talent for wrecking things during my frantic search. It's a double gift. My Mom has a field day when she sees the wreckage. It's like, I never thought people could really turn purple.

I just never found out why I keep on losing stuff/ human beings. Even if I've set up an organized system of keeping track of my possessions. I've alphabetized my CD's. Color-coded my clothes. Designated specific folders. Kept inventories of everything. Labeled like mad.

But things keep on disappearing. I don't get it. Am I just un-standable (k, i know this isn't a word.) that even inanimate objects slither off as fast as their little plastic/cloth/rubber appendages can carry them? Heck, even my tsinelas have taken to hiding under the bed.

I know I can't put them on my resume under special skills and abilities next to "little or no proficiency in Microsoft Excel."

I like to think this gift was given to me for a reason, and pareng god has grand plans for me and my great loser abilities.

But I just haven't figured it out yet.

the word of the day is conflict.

In the spirit of fight club, and talking about fight club, my life right now is festooned with fights and bitchfits, none of them without merit, but all of them quite upsetting if I let myself be so. I'm pretty sure I never asked for it all.

Case in point, Oberfuhrer A v c l l a has once again devised a way in which to make the class compete with each other in a series of legal questions fired at us in rapid succession, and our side of the classroom, called 'The Chaotic Republic of I r a q" will battle it out for points with "The Narrow-minded Republic of I r a n." The loser, will not only weep, but will have to dig through the dusty archives of forgotten Hollywood Silent Films and make copious amounts of reaction papers. All because the p h a n t o m s gave, according to the dick-tator, substandard reports and he wanted to supplement the discussion by making us all answer his queries instead.

We beat I r a n by sheer effort and excellent reasoning, at times, because of sheer luck and the laws of probability that makes "heads"-- our favorite option-- more frequent than "tails" in the coin-toss. Our sage, the Fuhrer's favorite student, was in fact assigned to our group and hence, aside from scoring duties, she would answer with us.

Again, in the spirit of fight club, and (to be fair) warranted bitterness since it was their interest at stake, the other group, with ill feelings, basically bad-mouthed the wee lass. In short, apparently, the Narrow-minded Republic of I r a n (how fitting) hates our guts and we expect more I r a q i bashing and all manner of violence to ensue. And that's just a game in a stupid m a s s m e d i a l a w class.

Think of the org. The college. The country. The world.

I take solace in what William Ellery Channing said. "Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict."

But then, a natural presupposition of conflict is to take sides, and on basis of principle and moral justification, be able to REASON why you made that decision. Generally, I do not like conflict, and dislike it when I unduly cause one. Which is why people find it easy to fight with me because they smell my weakness: that, as a rule, I don't fight back. That doesn't necessarily mean I CAN'T fight back. I wasn't made big and bendy for no reason. [See: killer leap frog attack, crouching snake attack, and killer kindness technique.] I could wheedle my way out of a pony-trench if I really set my mind to it.

But that doesn't mean I'd arm myself and charge. That just means, as much as possible, I would pick the diplomatic way out. Or would take great pains to be seen as neutral and, so god help me, objective. Perhaps it's borne from my inherent need to be liked. I AM needy.

Though I find myself at the right place and time to hear things I shouldn't, to hear secrets of both sides and misgivings about the opposing group that I sometimes wonder why I was ever given ears. I never disclose what I hear, and keep them secret from everyone, because, i don' want no trouble. Though I've started to fear I'll grow a tumor from all the things I keep buried DEEEEEEP within my spleen.

But then, I fess up to the fact that more times than not, in the picking of battles and battles un-picked, the hot-seat calls for decisions for- or against-, life or death, and who gets the brownie at the end of the day.

Truth is never nebulous, and politics is never beyond question. (being apolitical, in fact, is an ideological stance in itself, but is a disliked stance nonetheless). Besides, if recent experience goes to show, people like to stone those with no professed political positions. And it was Dante Alighieri who said: "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality."

At least it isn't the innermost circle of Hell, icy cold, and inhabited by the devil. diba?

I'd always try to avoid fight club, or Brad Pitt's wonderfully golden torso in fight club, and Edward Norton's savvy little smirk in fight club; no matter how appealing or character-building the option of conflict may be.

To the fiery depths of hell I go, then. I hope they at least have sunblock where I'm going.