Amazingly I have managed to shut up for almost a month, abandoning this blog thinking that it would write itself. I once asked Namtab Pots and Smoketh to ghost write something and try to pass off as me, but they were busy with real life concerns. The previous month has been quite a challenge—strike that, not a challenge, why try to make things sound positive all the time anyway—the previous month has been crap, and there is no point in writing something in such a hellish state. Unlike other writers who find inspiration in their most lonesome moments, I find no inspiration whatsoever in being miserable. There’s nothing funny to write about when you’re annoyed.

Self-imposed exile, however, is great in that you could accomplish a lot of things. Blogging, as it turned out, is quite time-consuming. So in my exile:
1. Was able to arrange all my action figures in the ultimate super hero pose. I decided to highlight the Silver-Age versions of the Superman Family and place them in the middle, with Marvel Legends relegated to the least noticeable levels of the eskaparate. Red Lantern of Rage Atrocitus looks wonderful beside Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Yellow Lantern Sinestro, and the Violent Lantern of Looooove, Carol Ferris Star Sapphire! Of course by the time I got back home the following week Supergirl fell from the upper level and toppled everyone down. She has very weak knees.

2. Went to the IM Team Building in a Robin costume, an excellent one if I may say so myself. I usually don’t care for these things, except that everyone in the batch is so karir about everything that I felt compelled to go with the flow. The theme for our batch is Epic Movies. Truly there is nothing epic about Robin, or the Batman and Robin movie for that matter, but one of my dreams since childhood has been to wear a jail-bait Robin whore costume. Everyone came in their most karir costumes, the incoming 2nd year’s theme being cartoon characters, and the incoming first years as horror movie characters. In terms of awesomeness my top picks would be Cruella de Ville, Daphne of Scooby Doo, Elizabeth Swan, Cousin It, Helen of Troy, and Fred Flintstone. Special mention to Cat Woman, someone I could interact with and indeed, she whipped me bad. Special mention also to Tinkerbell, who looked really fun and interesting when she got drunk.

3. Collected all seven rings of the multi-colored lantern corps from Comic Odyssey to join my previously acquired Black Lantern of Death. They are really ugly and look really cheap, and as Namtab Pots pointed out, they look like those freebies from Chikadees. But they are really fun to wear. I will one day require seven of my batchmates to wear them and we will pose for a peeeeeeekchur.

4. Went on to write more serious stuff and got self published on a couple of nationals. Was last week’s writer in Philippine Star’s National Bookstore book review competition, wherein I wrote about Gerard Jones’ Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. That competition has been my sole source of annual bookstore shopping money, and the contest has thankfully allowed me publication air time for the past four years. Some of the books I wrote about for the contest in the past years: Atonement by Ian Mc Ewan, Identity Crisis by Brad Meltzer, and something with no book in particular but in which I just related some of my weird childhood experiences. H&L editor also said he published my insomnia article for the December ish of Health and Lifestyle, but I am yet to see a copy.

5. Went back to writing short stories. The last one I wrote was around five years ago, and it shows. I wrote something I was planning to submit to a magazine while I was in GJ’s with Smoketh, and I asked her to read it with the tongue-in-cheek disclaimer that it’s a totally sell-out piece written with the sole intent of getting published, and she agreed. She told me never to submit it.

6. Went on a semi-brief reactive psychosis, just in case you can take one more whine. I’ve never had BRP’s because I think they’re corny, but when you’re having the most severe, debilitating allergic rhinitis attack while being alone in the OPD clinic with huge amounts of patients to see (whine whine whine), the feeling of being trapped made me miss Zolofta. No offense, Prozy, Zolofta rules.

7. Presented in the much-dreaded Endocrinology Conference, which was far scarier than my two audits. Had Smoketh not been my partner I would have totally gone loony. While cramming for it at four in the morning I typed with Smoketh in their fraternity-sorority tambayan, thinking no brods or sisses would see me and give me dagger stares. I’m a barb. Two medical students suddenly walked in, however, and started to extend their hands to give me their secret handshakes. Smoketh stopped them in time thankfully, for I might have had my CSF sucked out of me had I given them the wrong handshake. After the conference Smoketh and I wondered if we had been made kain by the consultants. We are dense to being made kain, someone has to point it out first.

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