Designated Drinker

Tally:

1 bottle of Red Horse beer (with one more to go; Red Horse is not my beer of choice but it's the only one in stock in the nearest suking tindahan open at one A.M. I've only had one but I feel like I've downed half a case of San Mig Lite.)
1 Burger Machine cheeseburger (with one more to go)
unknown handfuls of cheese flavored popcorn
x number of shots of vodka (one bottle down and one more to go)
a number of unopened chips (Piattos, Tostillas and some Nagaraya)

Needless to say, I'm a bit smashed. I'm tempted to not check the spelling on this post--or the grammar--but I'll hold off posting this until later this afternoon after I've sobered up and my brain's working again.

Background noise: girls chatting and giggling about stuff, a hiss and a pop of a bottle being opened, ice tinkling on an empty glass followed by pouring liquid, giggles, "putang ina" liberally mentioned, as well as "asshole" (or was it "aso"?). My ears are going to sleep first, I think.

Times like these I wish alcohol could help me and write works of genius like, say, Charles Bukowski but all I can manage is this post.

I'm off to open the last bottle of Red Horse and scarf down the last burger. And then to sleep. Right after I drive home a couple of the people here home, yes. And no, I'm not that drunk to not drive. A sign of my being drunk is when I go off and write a maudlin post about a frakking Tom Waits song or something. But then again, I wrote that the day after, I think. Oh well...

P.S. I inadvertently hit control something which posted this, uh, post, so fuck the spellcheck and the grammar.

Haruki Murakami

Recently finished Haruki Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and I declare that Haruki Murakami is the only writer that can reach the hopeless romantic in me that I keep locked up like Schrodinger's Cat.

His story On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning (which is included in The Elephant Vanishes) convinced me of his greatness that I muttered "shitfuckdammit" the first time I read it and then I immediately reread it three times in a row. He made the work seem effortless and easy. The story seems simple but it's not. Only the great ones can pull it off. Read it and I dare you to disagree with me. When I first read that story years ago I was courting someone so I reasoned out that I was in the mood for such a story (not that the story is overly romantic and mush-filled).

And years later, I buy and read his latest collection of short stories. I figured that On Meeting the 100% Perfect Girl... was a fluke and nothing would come close to it. I was partly right and partly wrong. No story in the collection came close to being a punch in the gut like that story but many of them came close. Amid his weird and strange and oblique stories like Nausea and The Poor Aunt Story, there are stories of lost loves and longing like A Folklore for My Generation: A Prehistory of Late-Stage Capitalism? (Which reads like a Wong Kar Wai film.)

And then there's Tony Takitani. (Which also reads like a Wong Kar Wai film that I hope Wong gets off his ass and adapts a Murakami story. Although there is a Tony Takitani film already, how about adapting Nausea, the one about vomiting? I'd love to see Wong's version of that, with of course Chris Doyle lighting.)

Reading these stories makes one want to fall in love only to wallow in and even cherish the the misery of the ensuing heartbreak.