So What If Dora’s Crying? I Had a Bad First Day of 2009 So The Hell I Care!

Okay, so I’m going to start this New Year with reinvigorated ranting. Again. Ha! So much about my consternation to at least mellow down my friggin’ diabolical angst and bastardly wicked ways this Year 2009. I guess there are some things that just stick with you like shit no matter how hard you try to get rid of them. This angst-ridden idiosyncrasy, I think that’s one on my personal list.

So I ushered New Year in by being late at work for two gawddamn minutes. Jeezuzchrist! Always the same fault, committing the same mistake over and over again. Fine, I’m guilty. Shoot me. Somehow it reminds me of the high schooler Lio who thinks he’s of aristocratic descent, finds nothing wrong coming to school at a time when the Filipino teacher is already 30 minutes through frothing a boring lecture to the class, and sits on his armchair like nothing just happened in spite of the accusing stares of forty souls and one stuttering drone.  Yes, my effin’ art of narcissistic bastardness goes way, way back in my formative years. Well, it’s a habit. And old habits die hard, if at all.

Anyway, the thing is, I was again late for work and that’s no thanks to my newfound stupidity. Because I was rushing to go to work, I just flagged a jeepney and got on without even bothering to read the destination signage. It does not help that you go to work feeling like a bad case of last night’s liquor overdose, pretty much like finding yourself naked with your Hey Jay best friend’s hands on top of your tits after last night’s drinking session. Kidding about the Parokya parody.

Allow  me to digress: Last night, I spent the second New Year celebration away from my family. Of course, when tough times like these happen, you seek the only refuge available – cold beer bottles and smokin’ hot pulutan to boot. This time around, though, I spent the night trying to feel like a grown man with the company of Tatay (my friend’s father; I’ve had the liberty to call him Tatay since he has become a father figure to me ever since my dad did a Houdini) and his fuckin’ big mouth high school batch mate. That night also saw me swigging a bottle of Black Label and a Fundador brandy follow-up for the first time.

I started downing half-glasses of Johnnie Walker without any chaser and found its taste rather bland and effin’ awful. You must understand my taste buds are accustomed to youthful flavors of Red Horse Beer and GSM Blue and introducing these whiskey and brandy all in one sitting is such a task I have to get used to. The brandy I can tolerate as I have been acquainted with other boring brands out there by uncles and friends but the whiskey, oh fuck-me-Freddy, the whiskey melts in your mouth and then goes deep down in your gullet before finally proceeding to attack your innards with that distinct acerbic twinge.  Bleech! Fine, I was trying too hard to be a full-blown caricature of a fat-assed old drunkard and I admit it, it had me caught off-guard. Fuck, I never even thought the Black Label was such a strong spirit that I even gulped half a glass in one go during my first swig!

It’s a good thing I had a fine specimen for distraction. In between cringing over the clusterfuck drink for old, bearding men and pseudo-laughing over Tatay’s guest’s yadda yadda yadda monopoly, I was rather euphoric for finally hearing HER voice over the phone after so long a time. Yes, fuckin’ grind your guts to death, SHE has finally texted me and shared a long lost string of what’s ups and what-nots. I better not go into details, though, as I am aware I know some readers (yes, I am  talking about you dear Essie-Chan, haha!) who will tease me ‘till kingdom come regarding this blooming love affair. Better not nip the bud.

Moving on, meeting Johnnie Walker last night cost me to wake up late, procrastinate (another old habit that can’t seem to die) over preparing to go to work and unfortunately, miss the common sense to check where the fuck is the PUJ’s destination. Still having the fuck-me-Freddy hangover, I was not even able to realize early on that the jeepney was not following the City Hall-Taft-Buendia route. I alighted from the vehicle cursing some crisp R18 invectives under my breath (“Oh Screw yourself, Lio, you fucked up piece of stupid slob!”) and hailed a cab to reach my work destination.

At this point, I thought Bad Luck Bastard was already running out of tricks up its sleeves. I thought wrong, of course. For after hopping in the friggin’ dysfunctional elevator, which would very well qualify as a rotting museum artifact, by the way, more like a piece of useless chunk of metal rather than a well-designed people-carrying lift, I was greeted by a piece of news that will have my facial bone structure in painful lockjaw later on.

I will not tell you the particulars as I fear doing so will cost my job and my effin’ five-digit salary but let me give you a rundown of the situation real quick:

As you are very well aware, I work as a Technical Support Representative for some cable ISP in the US. Now it happens that on the eve of December 31 (US time), its contract with one of its major cable programming channel provider will expire and along with the expiration is the inevitable demise of some premium channels that most of the ISP’s customers regularly watch. You can only imagine then the outrage that struck the subscribers upon learning that come past midnight, no thanks to the Cable Programming Channel Provider’s propaganda (the Programmer chose to blatantly tell the public that the ISP is dropping the channels instead of opting to just negotiate with the ISP in closed doors, far from media lime lights), they can never go gaga over some overrated clusterfuck adulated buffoons in one music channel or that their children won’t be able to be entertained by some friggin’ brown-skinned Spanish-speaking imp every morning. Effin’ retards, I’d say.

So the looming channel blackout had us take a deluge of mostly irate callers threatening to cancel and move to other cable operators, as if doing  so would change the fucked up situation. There I was, nursing a liquor hangover, feeling familiar goose bumps and kneading weak knees, becoming some freakin’ shock absorber of mad callers who never fail to whine over life’s petty pleasures. Calls upon calls, I have time and again explained to these stupid suckers who can’t seem to get the gist of the story that dear greedy ISP is currently negotiating with equally greedy Channel Provider earnestly, honestly, and fairly and we hope we are able to reach an agreement yadda yadda yadda. Fuck, now I know how it is to become a broken record from hell.  If I could only get my hand over to their end, I would have surely banged the fuckin’ phone to the bozos’ heads, hammering the freakin’ telephony machine ‘till their gawddamn  cranial flesh comes out of their gawddamn ignoramus skulls. That’s one perfect sight fit for a Dexter billing. Geez, the serial killer in me is making me a monster again. I mean, for chrissake, I am speaking using their native tongue; how hard was it to digest the fact that we can’t do anything else but to wait till the two different sides of the same greedy coin meet a common ground and connive in making poor fools out of them, thereby squeezing their pockets dry of godly kachings?

But wait, there’s more. You think our misery, the hapless incarcerated call center whores in that building, would end there, huh? Not about so for amidst the mad scramble of taking hundreds upon hundreds of clusterfuck calls, the selfless Work Force Management, gawd bless his saintly soul, that call center authority who manages and decides how many fuckin’ calls will we take in a particular day, thought we were breezing the gawddamn chore through with ease and carefree whistle and consequently, had the nerve to tell us after-call breather was not necessary. Sweet, this effin’ double douche bag faggot from Dante’s seven stages of hell.  So sweet, in fact, that methinks he deserves to be well-revered in a deity altar devoid of sperm-filled balls and shaven of his pubic hair and castrated of his useless penis.

I do not subscribe to the cliché “All’s well that ends well.” I believe if you committed something wrong, in spite of you righting it, it does not erase the fact that you’ve still done a bad thing. You have sex with your paramour, your wife catches you, you ask for forgiveness, she forgives you, but that does not take away the effin’ truth that you still got laid in some cheap motel by your lover.  This is the reason why I cannot fathom what gawddamn gimmickry both of the greedy clustefucks were playing at when after we have tormented our ear drums with redundant whining in American accent, the Cable Programmer and the ISP decided to kiss and make up, as if nothing ever happened. After we’ve reluctantly and grudgingly bore with all the complains crap, it turned out that the two different sides of the same greedy coin have reached a win-win agreement that will squeeze, in the most cunning way, the moolahs out of the pathetic suckers after all.

Somebody get me a knife. I need to cut a throat.