Kay Dennis. Okay lang kahit next time mo na lang kami libre. Hehehe. Uy lapit na nga rin pala birthday ni Nathan di ba? April ang alam ko.

Book # 7* is Fruitcake by the Eraserheads. Got my copy at the neighborhood NBS branch for the whopping price of thirty five pesoses! From the original from the php165(?), it’s quite a huge markdown since I couldn’t even afford to buy one myself when it first came out in our undergrad days. Book illustrator Cynthia Bauzon talks about it as well in a recent blog post. Strangely enough, I felt like Frannie Wei eerily resembled the illustrator, though of course I could be wrong.

As I read the book, I couldn’t quite get out of my mind that the Carol Kings were the Eheads themselves, disappointed at how they weren’t allowed to change and write and play their own songs as they would have wanted it. The burden of being the sole entertainer of Fruitcake Heights at such a young age, and the mysterious “own music incident” which drove them to escape the eternal snowsky of the fruitcake land. Fruitcakeans suffered from leading very predictable, safe lives, and they eventually all get afflicted with Monovirus and while located in a tropical country, they had Styrosnow. It’s the monotony that was most debilitating. Imagine having to sing the same old songs over and over again, not to mention that everyday was Christmas Day. Now that would be stressful.

I’d hate to be afflicted by the Monovirus. It’s like avoiding the inevitable fate that one day, we will all be old fogeys. Though I refuse to be one, there’s still the problem of negotiating authority. I found Fruitcake while looking for Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, which I figured I’d wage so I would not be mistaken for some undergrad anymore. According to good friend Claire, no matter what you do, appearances WOULD and DO count, especially in the grown up world of academics and old fogeys. It’s like being a model, she said. In order to have people believe that you are one, you must dress, behave and breathe like one all the time. So even if you aren’t exactly one, you at least give the illusion that you are. A mirage no matter how illusory are effective. So there you are. Walk like a duck, talk like a duck, therefore a duck you are. Argh.

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*Book #6 is Bright Lights, Big City. Para lang clear kasi marami na akong inabandunang books by the wayside bedside table.