Going to See the Elephant

So it was a newspaper people jargon. When a news reporter finds his first ever smash story, they call it 'seeing the elephant.'

The story set in San Francisco, California that is in the United States of America is fun. The young reporter whose passion is to write a great book worthy of becoming part of the annals of literature has been reading the works of literary greats but is fast depleting his finances because he is not earning, because he is trying to write the first sentences of his future great work.

Our hero’s name is Slater Brown and he got dumped on his first shot at The Morning Trumpet, a weekly newspaper, because he sounded very literary and dreamy, and did not meet the expectation of the editors. But he tripped on something magical, a radio that can pick-up conversations. In short, he got the juiciest shit and really got the elephant by the cojones. He became the toast of the town but was hounded by a dreamy encounter with a lovely woman who happened to be a good chess player. He did meet Callio de Quincy, the mystery woman, and they liked each other right away. It was with her that he divulged his innermost dreams, aspirations, and his magic shit. And it was her who can really feel his innermost dreams, aspirations, and how his magic radio is actually just shit that can hit the fan any moment.


San Francisco is also home to the smartest person in the world, Milo Magnet, who tried to manipulate the weather for whatever purpose it might serve. It was during his stint as the hotshot reporter that Slater hooked up with Milo Magnet and organized a chess match between Milo’s computer and Callio. Of course, Callio lost that brought her father to despise Slater more while Slater found his soul and disposed his magic transistor radio to pursue his destiny as a writer and his heart as a young man, sigh, in love.

The book described San Francisco at its dynamic best. From the restaurants and the food it offers to the scenic ordinary spots and the cable cars. Slater Brown described the city in a feeling way and how its people make it more interesting.


Going to see the Elephant made me miss San Francisco. My short stint experiencing the BART, the Golden Gate Bridge, Mission Street, the Cable Car, Pier 39, the most crooked street, the Budweiser beers, my KFC chicken without anything on it, the fucking scenic cold beaches, the drive, the people, and most especially a good friend holding his fort in probably the second best city in my world.

Going to See the Elephant
Rodes Fishburne 2009

Mitch Album

it was my cousin Marissa who just arrived for a vacation from Australia where she now resides who woke me from my blogging stupor as she proudly showed a picture of her with her god Mitch Albom of the Tuesdays with Morrie book fame, heard of him? She said she frequent bookstores in Brisbane to check out if they have sale items (new books in OZ cost roughly a thousand or more Philippine pesos) that she can purchase for more than 80 percent off just because the front cover is not perfect, or has a dent or a cut or whatever shit to lower the cost.

Anyway, I actually just read Mitch Albom's "For Another Day" and did not exactly enjoy it for some unknown reason. I liked Tuesdays with Morrie and even gave it as a gift to one of my cousin on her 18th birthday years ago. but "For one more Day" somehow disappointed me. It is about an over the hill baseball player who lost his marbles along the way when his mother died and got estranged with his wife and daughter due to his alcoholism. He tried killing himself, the suicide course to escape, but ended up alive and talking to his dead mother. It was a ghost story, Albom said, and I thought that we really do have ghosts to purge and heal somewhere in our lives. Plus the ghosts my sons occasionally see when they are in the mood for ghost hunting and stories and shit.

I have to admit it is heartwarming. It is touching, Not necessarily life touching, but a good read altogether to start up my reading groove again.

Read and Roll

 picture download from www.absurdrepublic.blogspot.com

Read and roll and fly.

Still Life with Woodpecker

Yum – it’s a fucking love story

Still Life with Woodpecker is not just “a sort of a love story” as suggested by its writer, Tom Robbins. It is a love story through and through as it threads the overflowing love of individuals expressing and experiencing it in different ways and in different circumstances.

The story revolves around two characters that came from opposite sides of the life spectrum in almost all aspects of their mortal life and the itsy bitsy idiosyncrasies of freaky individual characters in the sidelines of their world stage.

Leigh Cheri Furstenberg-Barcelona, a princess whose exiled parents, King Max and Queen Tilli, does not give her much choice but adapt to the American way of life. Leigh Cheri, the exiled princess who learned her life lessons quite early experiencing two abortions and being kicked out from school that led her to a celibate life and offered her service to help mankind through alternative lifestyle and being a future Ralph Nader groupie. (I have always been fascinated with Ralph Nader, the forever alternative candidate for the U.S. presidency. Last time I saw his shit was on MTV typing in an old school typewriter.)

Then there is Bernard Micky Wrangle, a.k.a The Woodpecker. The all-black clad Bomb expert. Anarchist. Outlaw extraordinaire. Lover of life and what ever it has to offer. The two met in Hawaii when Leigh Cheri’s lady-in-waiting Guiletta saw Bernard a.k.a the Woodpecker lit the dynamite fuse that wrecked a portion of the place where they were to attend a hippie cum new age type of conference. It was there where love struck them both melting their cold articulation of what love is into a “Love Kills” segue that made Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen get-off their fucked up world.

The Woodpecker sharply articulates his anarchist view of causing incidents, explosive most of the time, literally, to forward his protest against anything that has to do with what is happening in the world. His dynamite talks and the woodpecker walks. That’s what made Leigh Cheri unlock her chastity belt and offer everything she can offer the outlaw.

The outlaw can light his dynamite stick, shove it up his ass for show, but not to out mind his heart over what he felt and what he wanted, and that is not just Leigh Cheri’s ass, but her heart as well. He pursued her, just as she wanted him to be beside her all the time that led to his arrest. Wanted by the pigs, Bernard wanting to make love stay brought him to the pigsty.

It was during the times when Bernard was in the lam that made Leigh Cheri discover her potential for thinking freaky thoughts and theories by her meditating on a pack of Camel cigarettes. As a sign of her truthful love to the outlaw, she carbon copied her outlawed lover’s jail cell and lived just like a convict inside a cell, not going out, not going in, not going anywhere except inside her mind, and heart.

Just as Princess Leigh Cheri was planning to save Bernard the outlaw, she received a letter from the motherfucker spouting shit on her alleging that she capitalized on their love relationship as love struck people would also lock themselves up in clear imitation of what Leigh Cheri, the heir to the throne of the Furstenberg-Barcelona royalty, did for the sake of love.

A pissed Princess can do crazy stuff and that she did. She went out for her billionaire admirer and asked that a pyramid be made in honor of her before she weds him. Of course it was not a platonic relationship, dimwit. She learned to use her beauty and sex machination to maintain the steady flow of money, and liquid sex juice she deeply yearn to cum from the woodpecker. She was able to separate sex from what love really should be until she learned the death of the woodpecker that was able to leave prison by virtue of her lady-in-waiting Guiletta’s whim to release him. Guiletta by twist of fate was actually the next-in-line to the throne of the small kingdom! She is the older daughter of the King from his chambermaid or something. Anyway, Woodpecker was apparently killed somewhere in Algeria when he tried to follow Leigh-Cheri and rescue her from her vicious tragedy.

But it was not the case. By some dumb luck, the Woodpecker was actually alive and even met Princess inside the deepest chamber of the Pyramid on the eve of her wedding. No shit! Of course they tried to argue about the letter, about the camel pack, about the pyramid, but love, ah, love made them see through each others’ bullshit and made them hug. Then the jilted Arab saw them, and locked them inside the pyramid. They escaped in the end. Thanks to the ever present dynamite the outlaw carries almost wherever he goes.

Tom Robbins’ novels always, always reminds me of Ely Buendia and the Eraserheads’ witticism in writing lyrics to their songs. Almost all the Eheads album had that hippie flair consistent with Tom Robbins’ books. Both Robbins and the Eheads’ playful psychedelic shit bring thoughts of mescaline peyote induced hallucinations. Even Ely Buendia changed his name to Dizzy Ventura for sometime, a very suitable name for a Tom Robbins book. But it’s not about the Eheads, or the music scene. I just don’t know how to end this spiel, so here it goes.

Wrapped up in Books

Belle and Sebastian singing inside a library. Where the hell is the librarian?

reading lethargy

I have been meaning to write a new blog entry but I just cant get my thoughts organized. So much for parenting and work and cooking and shit. Ive bought a couple of books to be read but has not started reading reasoning out loud that I should cover it first. I got Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch and some not famous authors but shows promise reading from their respective blurbs.

Finding time to read when there is none is a joke. I sometimes steal time reading while in transit but it easily zaps my already spent energy. And the sad part is, I am actually not doing shit at all but still feel tired.

I try to recall the last book I was reading until lethargy crept in. Was it 31 Songs by Nick Hornby or the Che Guevara book written by his companero, Alberto Granado?  My brain entered the 'more stupid' mode even before I returned the two unfinished books at the library. Even '31 Songs' failed to shake my incoming stupor.  Could alcohol deficiency be the culprit for this low reading intellectual stimulation shit?  I tried to recall the book I read a couple of months ago, Easter Rising by Michael Patrick Macdonald but could not even write a start up sentence.

Its time to beer.

Please Read a Book

I am a strong advocate for book reading due to my sincere belief that if more people will read, then more people will be enlightened, and ahh, er, will buy from my fledgling book mongering business. I sell books for people to be enlightened, have wider knowledge and perspective, help humanity, and ahh, er, for beer and cigarette money.

Here is a video that knocks at the soul of every sensitive human being. Humbly sincere, and respectfully meaning to spread the joys of reading a book. I believe every book lover should post this in their internet social networking accounts to reach the biggest number of people in our quest for a better world through book reading. 

Thank you very much.

Respectfully yours,