I take pride in my pretensions that I live a spartan life, that I live in abject poverty, that I hate pleasure, that to be happy is to be arrogant, and all that crap, which is quite pointless as everyone knows how hedonistic I truly am. Still, I really do hate shopping–I abhor it, in fact–that I need emotional support before I buy anything of value, primarily to ward me away from the comic book shop and into the right store. I feel embarrassed strutting in the mall with shopping bags of clothes or eating relatively expensive food–such vile, vile activities, when there are other things to do, like suffer. Such scene is more embarrassing if you have a smile on, as if true happiness can be bought and such. For this I totally blame having been brought up in a Catholic school, where chastity and charity are the foremost virtues. Charity and chastity! We were told that if a nun of the congregation receives some gift from a student, like a pair of shoes, for instance, she would have to place it in a huge box and whoever among the nuns needs it the most would be the one who would receive it. Bummer.

Which is why I felt particularly sheepish when who should catch me walking across TCBATL carrying plastic bags of shopped goods but Aubs and Gene.
“Alam kong laman nyan,” Aubs declared.
“It’s… It’s…” I stammered.
And before I knew it the… cats were out of the bag. Particularly, the cat-like action figure of Indigo-1 the Indigo Lantern and the sperm-headed action figure of Blue Lantern Saint Walker!!!
“Magkano yan?” Aubs asked.
“Ah… ah…”

I know, when someone out there needs an MPPT.
And since the cats were out of the bag, why not pull out the contents of the entire fucking sack and let out… the whole set of New Guardians action figures which I’ve finally completed after months of patient comicbookshop/toyshop/toy convention hopping!!! Early morning toy rounds does indeed pay.

To end, let me quote something from the X-Files episode, Max. In it Scully stares at the stars and mumbles something when Mulder gave her some key chain as a gift for her birthday. Scully says, “Men who live spartan lives, simple in their creature comforts, if only to allow for the complexities of their passions.” This is totally not applicable in this blog entry, but I sometimes want to show off my encyclopedic X-Files knowledge.

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