July 15, 2013 by trainrides

I Could Be The One by Avicii feat. Nicky Romero

Here’s a list of what I learned from the music video I Could Be The One, also known as the story of a boring fat girl who dreamed a better life:

Don’t watch the video if you don’t appreciate satire, in which case, you should also stop reading this now.

Bored office workers surf non-work related sites such as online shops and self-help sites, especially fat office girls.

If you’re a fat girl, everyone will ask you to lose weight, which translates oftentimes to eating less or eating healthy. The right response is to tell them to eat a dick. Seriously.

Fat girls can shag hot bald guys, also long-haired model-type blonds, especially when there’s lots of alcohol involved pre-coitus. Anything and everything is possible with the help of alcohol. That was emphasized by the scene showing empty bottles on the night stand and the dresser after the fat girl woke up confused about the night before and with a naked beautiful male on her bed. Now if that shot of the bottles on the dresser was taken out, given that the girl was shown partying the night before, the correlation between fat girl-hot guy hook-ups and alcohol wouldn’t be too painful. Still painful but not too much. Oy vey!

Image Source: tumblr.com

The only thing your to-do list should have is to not give a fuck. That is all. The video will make sure you won’t miss this by dedicating a couple of seconds to a tight shot of the post-it of this list.

Just because you’re a fat girl who has finally transformed into a better looking fat girl, it doesn’t give you the right to ruin other people’s fun. Oh wait, it does? Why the hell didn’t I get the memo? Seriously, I would have appreciated it if the fat girl was giving the finger to skinny bitches drinking skinny margaritas on the beach. But a little girl making sand castles? Really?

Fat girls, even when they’re having fun, still look fat, sad and a joke. Feel free to spot the scenes illustrating this. Hints: sloppy kiss with the hot bald guy, ass grabbing at a party, humping on a yacht, the windmill scene, pot session, riding a horse by the beach.

If you’re an ordinary-looking fat girl, everyone else in the office seems thin and not-so-ordinary. Of course, in real life, most office workers are at risk of obesity. Yay?

If your life is one big routine, all you’re really doing is dying. No joke here.

Fat girls shouldn’t ride horses. There’s just no graceful way of mounting the beast, especially stallions. Gravity is almost always not on your side when you’re overweight.

One of the saddest things in the world is staring at the crotch — which happens to be inches away from your face — of a barely clad male stripper with a stupid look in your face. The right way to do it is to look unaffected while smiling naughtily (achievable by lifting the left corner of your mouth with your lips closed) every few minutes, even though on the inside you are jumping giddily while throwing your arms in the air.

Image Source: genxflow.com

If you’re a fat girl, you will be treated like a doormat, unless you do something about it. Okay, that was an exaggeration. Not all doormats are fat girls. I mean, you don’t have to be fat to have people walking all over you. Kidding aside, if you’re fat and a doormat, maybe it’s time to ask yourself what kind of masochism you’re gunning for.

If you have a bitchy hot girl, possibly with eating disorder colleague who probably is your superior and she rudely dumps paperwork on your desk on a regular basis, you will one day let go of your rage and just lose it. And I mean rampage in its rawest form. Needless to say, it won’t be pretty.

The moment you decide to change your life, you get killed.

The moral of the video? Don’t try to change your life or go into a vacation. Let people walk over you. That’s okay. Not all of us are created equal. If your looks are ordinary and you are fat, you are a tragedy. Accept that. Believe in your shrink and take that pill. Continue your routine because such is life. If you do otherwise, you can get killed. You don’t wanna get killed.

Notes:
I did not use asterisks to soften R-rated vocabulary because that would be doing the video a vast disservice.

This post is dedicated to JJ and Ann who are big fans of this song.

Sorry, JJ, it took me a long time to write this.

April 16, 2013 by trainrides

The Girl Who Loved Obituaries

Photo courtesy of 123rf.com

Kim looks at people and imagine what their obituary would read as. When she was a little girl, she had feared death and all things related to it. She was afraid to look at pictures of dead people. She could not look at coffins. When her mom would take her to the cemetery, she would try not to read the names on the tombstones. When she became an adult, she decided to do something about her fear. She started reading obituaries. That’s how she turned into the girl who reaches first to the obituary page of the Sunday paper.

She has written her own obituary, and it’s unlike what you usually read on the newspapers. Kim thinks it’s a pity that your last announcement in this world would just include the name of the funeral house, the date of the interment and the people who have survived you. Instead of a tearful eulogy, she wants to make sure she has a well-written obituary.

Five days a week, she answers email queries about an apparently problematic online payment system. Most of the queries have templates for answers. She oftentimes imagine what the person is like behind the email address. Is he a burly old guy who will have a funny, half-page obituary? Maybe a retired banker who will have a no-nonsense obituary, 3 or 4 lines approximately. Or it could be the old lady everyone is fond of who will have a family member write a heartwarming obituary full of recounting of her character.

On weekends, Kim tries to spend as much time with her boyfriend who works as a college instructor. He hates Kim’s obsession with obituaries because he once read a short story about a girl who reads obituaries in the bathroom when she’s menstruating because she was molested when she was a child. Kim tries to assure him she was not molested but he remains doubtful.

They had been together for almost a year. There’s nothing magical about their relationship. What they have is a comfortable companionship that lacks growth and maturity. Despite the seemingly monotonous context, Kim likes being with him. He has not had any declarations of love and has not talked about marriage plans. Kim sometimes wish he would but most of the time, she’s just content to lay in his arms listening to his deep, evenly spaced breathing.

One Sunday morning while having breakfast, they had a row when he saw Kim reading intently the obituary page.

Will you please not read that while we’re eating? Or in front of me?

Why not?

Of course, she knows quite well why not but she’s tired of defending herself.

Because it’s all about death. I think you’re getting more and more obsessed with death.

No, I’m not. Besides the headlines are full of death. How’s that different from the obituary?

It’s different and you know that. You don’t even know those dead people. Why do you care about them?

He then got up, leaving his unfinished food and went to their bedroom.

They rarely fight and she hates it when they do. She followed him to the bedroom. He was staring out the window.

I was not molested when I was a kid. I had a normal childhood. I was just really afraid of dead people. Why don’t you believe me?

I believe you. It’s just unsettling when you read those things. Why can’t you just have a hobby like normal people do?

So now you’re saying I’m not normal?

He laughed but it didn’t reach his eyes. Kim is starting to feel there was something he was not telling her. She does not like surprises and that’s why she likes him because he is predictable. He likes toast and eggs for breakfast, pizza on Fridays, classical music when he’s checking test papers and white underpants. There is definitely comfort in routine. But right now, Kim is scared that something is about to change. He could see it in his eyes.

Death is about pain and letting go. No matter how much people say it’s beautiful, you can never convince the bereaved family of that.

I’d like to think of obituaries as happy endings.

No matter how happy they are, they’re endings. I don’t want you fixated on endings. We’re still young. We’re barely starting. There’s a lot of things we haven’t done yet.

Are you breaking up with me?

She didn’t mean to say it out loud but she fears it’s what he was trying to say.

No, silly. I want us to get married.

As relief flooded through Kim, she couldn’t stop her tears.

You really shouldn’t cry. It’s not like someone died.

She hugged him hard.

You’re well aware marrying you means I get to write your obituary, right?

He smiled as he slid the ring on her finger.

I guess so.

Photo courtesy of glamour.com

March 15, 2013 by trainrides

Of Crowds and Fridays

Photo courtesy of hmdigiart.com

Weekdays are hectic. The days go by in a blur of sweaty commute, hurried lunches, deadlines, office gossip, punctuated by his text messages reminding you that in another part of the city, he’s also caught in a routine and can’t wait for the weekend. Friday is a reward for the sacrifices of the week. But you’d have to contend with traffic jam and people flooding the malls due to weekend payday sale. And early summer heat reminds you that your feet are numb and you badly need a massage.

Then you see him waiting for you in the midst of a sea of faces, and you swear you can almost hear that The Cure song playing in the background. And the way he lights up when he sees you in the crowd is precious. You love this man and as he hugs you, you’re reminded of the promise Friday brings: that it’s gonna ignite the fire of a lover to burn through the darkness of your daily routine and the passion to satisfy the hunger to touch another soul.

The weariness of the whole week fades. The world is right again because it’s Friday, you’re in love.

March 11, 2013 by trainrides

Key Takeaways of Coffee-flavored Early Morning Conversations

1. We tend to romanticize turning 30 (or 40 or 50 and so on). It is not bad. It is, in fact, inspiring and gives you the chance to know more about yourself and what you want in life.

Photo courtesy of someecards.com

2. We get overwhelmed with so-called friends. It is okay to cut ties with people we don’t really care about. Instead, value our true friends and spend time with them.

3. One of life’s biggest tragedies is losing the sense of irony.

4. It is the truth that there are no awkward silences between friends, only comfortable ones.

Photo courtesy of tumblr.com/tagged/comfortablesilence

5. If you choose to see it as being stuck in a routine, then you get stuck, but you can also see it as a new story every day and savor the now.

6. That friend who’s truly special because you haven’t seen him in years but when you meet again, you talk and laugh like you’ve been doing so every day in the last four years.

7. Coffee shops late at night and into the wee hours of the morning transform into a library that caters mostly to med and law students who can afford gallons of lattes.