Songs That Make Me Want to Kill Myself

No title sensationalism, this, indeed, is about songs that make me want to kill myself, those that just dredge up my deep-seated neuroses and bring out my death instinct. I found that the perfect substitute to sertraline and fluoxetine are action figures and good songs, but there are songs that just make me want to reach for a razor and end it all, literally. I am excluding all 80’s songs here, specifically those by Tears for Fears, as they all trigger a neurotic episode. So here they are:

1. Spoon by The Dave Matthews Band- That pained Dave Matthews voice with the restrained humming of Alanis Morissette in the background just squirms its way inside me and switches a self-destructive urge on, specifically the urge to OD. I remember that I’ve been listening to this song while inside a jeepney in Cubao after an interview for a med school admission, and I’ve been having a career-direction crisis, because we all know what I really want, which is to be a 70s rockstar with bad hair and a huge groupie.

2. The Scientist by Coldplay- anything by Coldplay is depressing even if they’re just singing about the speed of sound, but The Scientist is eerie as hell. 2nd year medicine. Ironic that I’ve been under medication and electroconvulsive therapy at this point so I was actually happy then. I first heard this song while listening to the radio half asleep and I was dreaming that I was riding the MRT.

3. My Funny Valentine as sung by Matt Damon- from the Talented Mr. Ripley, 4th year college. Basically because the whole movie is dark and morose and despondent. I want to ride a boat, reach for the paddle, hit my head with it, and scream to myself in my best Dickie Greenleaf impersonation, "You’re boring!".

4. A Sorta Fairytale by Tori Amos- no particular reason, it’s just depressing, but sometimes it makes me happy– I guess that’s how mood swings work. Not really related to its depressive effect, but whenever I listen to this song I remember assisting in a modified radical mastectomy in an extremely hot operating room and getting yelled at during surgery internship.

5. Always On Your Side by Sting and Sheryl Crow- I’ve been listening to Crow’s album Wildflower while studying for the board exams, and realized in utter mortification that the whole 5-year delaying tactic called medical education is coming to an end, making me want to insert my wet thumb in an electrical outlet. Also, the song "Wildflower" contains the lyrics "Everything I know just fades away" which is descriptive of the whole study period.

6. Hey Jude from the movie The Royal Tenenbaums- I really like the scene where Luke Wilson stares at the mirror, shaves his head, and declares, "Tomorrow, I am going to kill myself", but he tries to kill himself that very moment anyway! It’s very… inspiring.

Ending It All With a Gunshot to the Face!

To your relief, this is not another entry on death and self-destruction–I just felt like writing that title. This is instead a confession on the numerous books I have not finished reading. I had my book ravenous days, when I would read and finish everything, even the most boring and annoying ones. I once told Namtab Pots that the reason I would not stop reading the horrible Andrew Vacchs book Flood years ago was because I bought it for 90 pesos in Booksale, but he retorted that the hours I’ve spent reading that crap is worth more– I could have flossed instead, or wrapped my comic books in plastic and arranged them chronologically. Here are the books with whom I have unresolved issues:

1. Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg- The two people I know who read it called it a classic, but so is Anna Karenina of which I’ve read 1 page. Anna Karenina is not in this list because 1 page did not create enough of an issue between us. Everything about Smilla is just so detached and… cold. Hoeg could have deliberately been going for that feel, so in that respect he succeeded, but I still fell asleep. Dropped at: 200 pages.

2. Something Happened by Joseph Heller- After reading Catch-22 and enjoying it immensely I’ve tried to get as many Heller books as possible, then found that the other ones don’t possess the same gravitas that Catch-22 has. Dropped at: 94 pages.

3. The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith- I realized that I don’t really need to know anything more about Tom Ripley, because if at some point I discover that he’s been abused as a child in an attempt to explain his deviance I would laugh non-stop. Dropped at: 28 pages.

4. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut- and the other Vonnegut books I’ve tried. He’s actually very fun and interesting. Call me a moron–there are some things I just don’t get, and after a few pages I get distracted and revert to reading Batman. Dropped at: 13-42 pages.

And tons more. But there are some books that I’m thankful I’ve read and worked through the difficult parts, having been greatly rewarded at the end, such as Atonement by Ian McEwan, Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Dune by Frank Herbert, and Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh.
I need some comments! Tell me about the books you’ve dropped and why.

The Best Love Story of ALL Time!

In today’s Star, a columnist asked famous celebrities what their favorite romantic movies are. Of course, we get the usual Sleepless in Seattle, A Love Affair, Gone With the Wind, and perennial favorite, Casablanca. Well and nice, but I will never change my opinion that the most romantic movie of all time is Quills.

In Quills Geoffrey Rush plays Marquis de Sade, a writer who is a purveyor of all sorts of sexual perversion, Joaquin Phoenix plays a priest who aims to change him, and Kate Winslet is the chambermaid in classic 18th century chambermaid lace and spilling breasts fetish costume. The priest, of course, has the hots for the chambermaid and the sexual tension is driving everyone nuts, but he couldn’t allow himself to fall for her. Enter Marquis de Sade and his ideas of sexual liberation. To get to the meaty part, Kate drowns in a mental institution and Joaquin wails in anger. In his dream he finally fulfills his sexual longing– he walks towards the naked body of the dead Kate lying on a church altar and fucks, ahem, fornicates, with her. Very dramatic, but Marquis de Sade gets the best line in the movie– "I will fuck you in every orifice in your body, and carve orifices where there are none!!!"
In the end Marquis de Sade gets his comeuppance by eating his faith–literally. He eats the rosary Joaquin was dangling on him and chokes on it.

I recommended this movie as a post-Physics 71 exam to Therese and Kaka 7 years ago. They never forgave me.

On the 6th tuesday we talked about forgiveness and multi-barelled automatic head gun contraption that blows your brains out

The title, of course, is a reference to the chapters of Tuesday’s with
Morrie, a book I’ve been trying to finish reading in my PDA for six
months, as I can only take one moral lesson a month without getting a
headache. In terms of lessons on forgiveness and moving on, nothing, of
course, beats the new addition to the list of unnecessary sequels: Saw
3.

Saw 1 is still one of the best cult movies of all time, and Saw 2 is a
worthy sequel. Everyone I knew told me Saw 3 would suck and I dismissed
them all as pseudo-erudite criticisms of high-browed
pseudo-quality-movie freaks, but this is where I hang my head in shame.

It hurts me to type this, but Saw 3 is crap. The movie shows
alternating scenes of Jigsaw dying, this man undergoing the tests, and
background scenes of what really happened in Saw 1 and 2. The latter
are the only interesting parts of the movie, if rather unnecessary.
Years after I’ve seen part 1 I had still cringed at the part where Jigsaw
stood up and was revealed to be behind it all. Seeing him now preparing
for it, putting on make up and all, destroys this fear.

The notorious tests are no longer scary or even gross, Amanda is
already annoying, Jigsaw is overexposed, and we couldn’t care less
about the guy taking the bleeping tests. And, of course, there are the
obligatory ending twists, which could have worked and saved everything,
except for the fact that I couldn’t understand them– basically because
they were being narrated by a dying jigsaw in his dying breath. Imagine
an intubatable, gasping man in the ICU with a low, raspy, voice explaining the relationship twists of
Melrose Place. There.

At the end of it all, Saw 3 is apparently all about forgiveness. Moving
on. Shedding your enmity of things past and embracing what the future
has to offer. Detaching yourself from the pain while reveling in it at the same. Yes, in the final scene, Jigsaw removed a plastic mask and revealed himself to be none other than… Morrie Schwartz! (Feb. 6, 2007)

Sex With Barbed Wire and Electricity

In a parallel universe I will be able to release two novels about drugs, psychotic breakdowns, religious crises, autoerotic asphyxiation, drugs, self-mutilation, failed suicide attempts, drugs, mental disorders, alien abductions, and drugs–all autobiographical. These novels would have a cult following and would propel me to be written about in future reference books about semi-famous novelists. I would be written about as such:

Filmore (pseudonym) was born to clinically alcoholic parents. He grew up living in a cramped apartment with his grandparents who taught him how to smoke pot at an early age of 8. Through the help of a seemingly benevolent arab he was able to finish high school, but discovered that he had to pay back through wild sexual favors. He worked his way through college where he met writers NFS and LRZ, who became his roommates and co-editors in the university paper, and who introduced him to LSD, cocaine, benzedrine, metamphetamine, and heroin. At 28, under the influence of benzendrine, he wrote his first novel, "Killing Your Friends", which became a pop culture phenomenon, but which caught the attention of the senate for its explicit encouragement of chemical lifestyle. At age 32 he married a childhood friend RTM, and was imprisoned two days later for imposing sexual asphyxiation on her which landed her in the ICU. Filmore wrote his 2nd novel "Caterwauling Aliens" while in prison, a story about a prisoner who found God in a slice of meatloaf, which received annoyed reviews, calling him a sell-out.

Upon his release 5 years later with a new sense of faith he immediately entered the seminary, and was kicked out two days later after he was discovered sprinkling the holy host with pot. He attempted suicide by sticking his head in an oven but was saved by a stalker fan who’s been secretly living in his attic for 6 months. He then checked himself in to a mental institution where he feigned to be crazier than he really was so he could receive electroconvulsive treatments, after which he would write his memoir "Dog Carcass" that regained his cult status. While in the psych ward he would experiment with all kinds of sexual acts that involved barbed wire and electricity, resulting in the death of two 14 year-old schizophrenics. He eventually lost all his money in settling the homicides. Homeless and penniless he escaped the asylum, and has been spotted in dark alleys looking for sex and drugs.

There! For more interesting stories on the lives of genuine cult-status authors, I refer you to the excellent book The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction, available in Powerbooks. Personal favorites would be the write ups on Martin Amis, Philip K. Dick, Marquis de Sade, Harlan Ellison, James Ellroy, Graham Greene, and of course, perennial favorite Sylvia Plath who really did stick her head in an oven. (Jan. 29, 2007)

Oracle, Formerly Batgirl

After years of semi- and micro-reunions with old friends we have all discovered that I have an uncanny memory for old happenings and events, specially for the more pointless and unremarkable ones, and I remember them as if they’ve only happened last month or last week. For instance, I have an extremely lucid memory of me sitting in our Psych 160 lecture class with Dr. David sitting beside Groin and behind Andy, or me talking outside our Psych 150 room to Ana Clarissa Panes, or me taking the blood pressure of Mark Secong. I think that all of the megabytes used up for these extremely useless informaton preclude me from remembering, for instance, the proper classification of cephalosporins or the distribution of the median, ulnar, and radial nerves, despite all the mnemonics in the world. So during dinners and such I would relate a very old, funny happening, being nostalgic and all, and I’d get blank stares or polite chuckles.

In comic lore Barbara Gordon, formerly known as Batgirl, who is now Oracle, is considered to be eidetic, ie, she can remember every single freaking detail she has ever come across with–names, faces, events, scientific factoids, etc. I am not eidetic, which is why I am presently having a romantic/sexual relationship with my PDA, who is named Oracle. (Jan. 23, 2007)

And For Today's Whine: I Want To Wrap My Head in Plastic

I sometimes want to wrap my head in plastic, the really thick, transparent ones, not necessarily to kill myself (although that would be a fun consolation prize), but to block out everything, every stimulus, every noise, every thought, every nagging memory, every infernal bleeping stressor. Yes, yes, all these things all come from inside my head so I would effectively be blocking them from getting out instead of vice versa, but I still want to do it.
When I was a kid I was very amused with the label in a plastic bag that says "This is not a toy". This amusement is matched only by the label on those tiny moisture-absorber packets in packed food that says "Do not eat this". The statement "Do not eat this" is just very inviting in a hissss-don’t-eat-the-apple-hisssss-slither-slither sort of way. (Jan. 18, 2007)

P.S. Now that I have rotated in Toxicology, I now know better and am aware that while eating those moisture-absorber packs might provide some amount of drama, it won't kill you. Embarrass you probably, because really, what the fuck.

Tresa's

After hours of looking for a place a friend called TRESA’S, we finally found it. It turned out no one we asked ever heard of TRESA’S because it wasn’t called TRESA’S in the first place, but TRICIA’S. Mispronunciations are due, no doubt,to years of hearing X-TRAY for X-RAY, and CT-SKULL for CT-Scan.

No one even pretended to be shy, Louibear braying into the 20-octave version of I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing, alternating Regine and Aerosmith version. The block song, of course, is Fixing a Broken Heart duet version, Ditz the Titz singing the guy parts, I singing the shrilly fingernail-against-chalkboard-screechy parts. Everyone knew every Backstreet Boy song ever created, all the lyrics, all the inflections, all the Uh-huh’s and Yea-eh’s.

The overwhelming hit of the night, of course, is I’ve Never Been To Me by Charlene Duncan, because of its socially relevant message complete with narration, talking about life, death, adultery, prostitution, abortuses, rainforests, and so on. Ditz and I have been looking for the song that contains the lyrics "It was just another piece of the puzzle!!!!" but we couldn’t find it. According to Ditz it’s the perfect gay bar song. We were reminded of one of our patients in ambu who invited us to a show/performance art he was doing in QC. He was muscular with long hair, so Ditz had to ask, "Maghuhubad ka?"

In between songs we ate greasy, barely recognizable food. Louibear drank a glass of water.

"Bakit maligamgam?" he asked.
"Yan kasi yung pinagbababaran ng kutsara," Ditz the Titz said.

The Superman Curse

I’ve finished reading Gerard Jones’s non-fiction book about the history of superhero comic books during an uneventful duty in EK’s clinic. Each duty has always been uneventful, but for some reason less than five people had "post-ride vertigo". I’ve always looked at such "patients" with slight disdain and always told them that if the ride loops 360 degrees six times there’s that possibility that yes, you will get dizzy, but whenever I remember that 9 years ago I’ve almost barfed after the first upstroke swing in anchor’s away I snap back to being nice. Or tolerant.

Gerard Jones narrates how the superhero comic book came about in the 30’s, birthed by the Depression and gangsters and such, but goes into more detail into the struggles of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman. As a comic geek myself I have always been aware that they did have a hard time getting recognized and compensated as the creators of the character that singlehandedly created the superhero genre, but after reading Jones’ well-researched accounts I now look at comic books with a new set of eyes and appreciation.

Siegel (writer) and Shuster (artist) created the character in the early thirty’s but failed to sell them to publishers until 1939, when it became a major pulp hit, each issue of Action comics selling more than 1 million copies. To put this into perspective, each "hit" these days, such as Birds of Prey or Superman, sells roughtly about 50,000 copies. The problem was Siegel and Shuster sold the character without much thought, brought about by what they looked like a lucrative deal to those 2 young boys in their twenty’s. Superman went on to have a hit radio show, publishers Jack Liebowitz and Harry Donenfeld got filthy rich, while Siegel and Shuster received a less than modest per-page compensation. Shuster eventually went blind and no longer able to draw the character, Siegel went into deep depression and became an awful writer. To illustrate how awful, Jones describes Siegel’s attempt at a new superhero, Funnyman, and it is rather awful.

Of the two Siegel was the one who pushed for recognition while Shuster disappeared entirely from the scene. He mailed hundreds of letters to national newspapers, got this hopes up by some editors and lawyers, but mostly just got frustrated. An enraged Siegel then proclaimed, which some claimed was done very tongue-in-cheekly, that he was putting a curse on the Superman franchise. Come to think of it: George Reeve, the guy who played Superman in the 50’s TV series blew his own brains out with a gun. Christopher Reeves became paralyzed. And of course, most horribly, Dean Cain became the host of Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

Finally in 1975, after 36 long years of misery, of seeing their creation making everyone rich except its creators because of an unjust deal, through the huge efforts of comic book writer Jerry Robinson, and through a series of events that led to a change of ownership of the publishing company and later through a national media frenzy, it was made official that all Superman products (except toys because they’re difficult to print on) should bear the logo Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. I rarely get teary eyed whenever I read a book, but I did when the deal was finally closed, and after 36 years of poverty and injustice, Walter Cronkite announces in television that "…finally truth, justice, and the American way have triumphed, and that’s the way it’s going to be, December 24, 1975." All the Siegel and Shuster supporters screamed and cried as they watched this during their victory party, and I myself got all misty too.

Upon getting back home I immediately checked my father’s huge collection of 60’s Superman comic books, and discovered that they really weren’t credited back then. That in the underbelly of what seemed like a every innocent time, when comics were fun and jovial and simple, was the grime of abuse.

There are other very interesting facts in Jones’ book. Wonder Woman’s creator William Moulton Marston is a maverick psychologist who was seminal in the creation of the modern lie detector test. As much as a symbol of feminine strength Wonder Woman seems to be, a lot of those "innocent" 40’s comic books had her in positions fairly suggestive of bondage and female subservience. While the crediting of Siegel and Shuster is a triumph on its own, the opposite is true of Batman’s creator Bob Kane. He did not create Batman alone. In fact, he did not create most of what makes Batman Batman. He hired a lot of ghost artists and ghost writers, with Bill Finger being almost the true creator of the character. As opposed to the young Siegel and Shuster, the young Bob Kane was shrewd and cunning. He IS still the only one being credited as Batman’s creator almost 70 years hence, Bill Finger is dead, so I guess there’s still a lot of victories left unaccomplished. (Jan. 14, 2007)

Ennui

Strangely, in the ennui of things, I have the strongest desire to kill myself. Yes, I am saying it now–I want to kill myself. In psychiatry a person who proclaims suicidal desires deserves emergent attention and should be taken seriously, which leads me to now say that no, I am not really going to kill myself after all– so to all the concerned people (all two of you), save your cell phone loads. It just feels good to say that you want to die, in the same manner that claiming that one is a "tortured artist" or a "soul spiraling into depressive hell", or having enormous eyebags and a long beard after long duties, feel dramatic. That I am now admitting that this is all for effect, of course, relegates this entire verbose paragraph into one long, infernal whine. Yes, this is a whine, and I thank you for listening. (Jan 13, 2007)

Bring The Conspiracy Back!

Finally got around to watching The Prestige, and it turns out to be more fun than the touted Batman vs Wolverine battle. Battle of wits turn out to be more interesting than batarang and adamantium, and besides, as much as a bat-freak I am, no bat-bolas or bat-whatever can possibly destroy wolverine. Of the two characters Bale seems nobler, but Jackman’s is way more entertaining as he reminds us of our annoying high school and college classmates who turn themselves inside out to be at the top of the class, those who scream "Yes! Yes!" after each exam. The best character of them all, of course, is that of Scarlett Johansen. Scarlet manages to do something the two guys’ leading ladies in the past have failed to do, which is to be prettier than the boys. As much as a MILF Famke’s Jean Grey was, her veiny neck was just too distracting. And of course, we all barf at Katie Holmes in Batman. I recognize the actor who played the Amazing Maleeni in the X-Files episode, also about magicians, which, strangely, also uses the body-double device. This, of course, brings to question: Are they even going to create a 2nd X-Files movie at all? After Season 9, which I really like, by the way, ended in 2002, everyone was excited that a 2nd movie unhampered by continuing series would be shown, first in 2004, then moved back, then totally forgotten. I don’t care if David and Gillian and Robert and Annabeth are in their late 40s, bring the conspiracy back! (Jan. 12, 2007)

Let Me Start By Saying Something About Myself

Let me start by saying something about myself. I am presently in limbo, and I would like you to tell me your life plans so I can copy them to the letter. I am no longer sertraline-requiring, but I still develop instant psychosis whenever a decision has to be made. I have at least one full year to do the things I have always wanted to do, and now that I have the time I just freeze and stare at the list like a moron. Said list includes: wrap all comic books in plastic, wrap all books in plastic, write a story every week, drive faster than 20 kph,watch all the x-files episode in order, read more books and less comic books, take the ultimate action figure group pic, and actually earn some money.

Contrary to popular notion I actually have dreams–as in aspirations. For instance, I would like to be popular enough to be parodied in the Simpsons and do my own voice. I would like to be the X-Files Geek in the Beat the Geeks. I would like to read a Russian novel in one sitting. I would also like write for DC Comics and contribute more mess to its 70-year continuity. I have recently dredged up the stories and essays I wrote in high school and college, and I want to burn 98% of it. If I could have a super power I would like to have the ability to totally forget something that happened to me, or actually erase the event from ever happening–ie, retcon it out
of existence. To understand what retcon means, think of what happened to Supergirl after 1985. From being the Kryptonian cousin of Superman, she became a genderless protoplasm with the DNA of Lana Lang from a parallel universe who bonded with a human girl who bonded with an angel who became the fire elemental who had a fling with Lex Luthor and a fling with an actual demon named Buzz. There.

My other goal in life is to have an actual writing career. At this point I remember aspiring models who go to Hollywood to try out and have an actual acting career. And then find out how difficult it is, and become pornstars.

This blog will mostly probably be populated by book reviews, comicbook reviews, movie reviews, action-figures, aliens, superheroes, people I know, general experiences, general whinings, TV shows, and other things you would only read in times of sheer and utter boredom. But if you want me to I can also dispense relationship and medical advice. (January 12, 2007)