my world was flickering.

my weekend festivities took their toll when i woke up yesterday morning feeling sick. or not so much “sick” as “definitely not well.” my head felt heavy. my breathing felt thick, syrupy. and the sound and contrast of the world was muted, grey with noise reduction. i sat up and noted that it wasn’t merely a hangover; that “sick” smell was present.

you know that smell the first morning you wake up sick? i don’t know if it’s some change in the makeup of your saliva, or maybe your lung passages are tainted with some kind of chemical which alters the smell of your breath. but when you’re sick, or at least when i’m sick i can smell it.

a few hours and many pharmeceuticals later, i felt a little better. except the world was even duller; my senses were numb. i ventured out of my apartment to eat lunch, some hot vietnamese soup (or “pho,” for the initiated) to aid my staggering health. i only finished about half of my order.

i ended up at the record store, obstensibly shopping for presents for other people. but after ten minutes or so, that noble goal was forgotten and i had gathered a growing batch of personal indulgences. and i don’t know if it was the dust of the “used” new arrivals, or the spirit of christmas seeking to curb my selfish behavior, but i suddenly buckled. or rather, my body did. i had to lie down.

right now.

i abandoned my vinyl selections. i got into my car and made it home and into my bed. i didn’t even manage to take off my socks or empty my pockets.

i woke up hours later. and my world was flickering. at first i thought there was something wrong with the christmas lights in my room.

they were fading and brightening at odd intervals. but then i figured out it was just me.

i turned on a legitimate light, my halogen lamp, and at first it broke through the cobwebs. but as i sat there in my bed half-bundled in blankets, soon enough that bright light would flicker as well. it was a peculiar sensation. i realized that, logically, it was only my senses which were fading and intensifying, but even with this knowledge the resulting effect seemed no more comforting.

because my world was flickering. the light of the world was waxing and waning in time to an unseen clock, languid and diminished. and no combination of soup or pillows would remedy the situation tonight.

i walked out my door this morning and my first thought was, “you gotta be fucking kidding me.”

i knew that it had cooled off during the night. when i woke up i could sense the wintery-air pressed up against my windows. and knowing that it had rained for a good portion of the night, i figured it would be jacket weather.

but when i started my car and noticed that the dashboard thermostat read thirty-six degrees, i cut off the engine and headed back into my house because i realized that a t-shirt/jacket combination wasn’t going to cut it. no, this called for some sweet, sweet layer action.

i have a problem gauging temperature. upon initial contact with the outside world, i have a hard time recognizing the difference in temperatures between 30′ and 60′. basically, i can recognize if it’s under 60′, or over 90′. cold, hot. or, you know, “medium.” i don’t know what this sensory deficiency says about me as a person really, other than if this were prehistoric caveman times i probably would have died off years ago.

i just find it startling that in the course of a single evening, the tempertaure cut itself in half. don’t get me wrong, i’m not bitching. i like the cold weather, because at this very moment i am enjoying a freshly-bought cup of hot chocolate. and nothing accentuates crisp thirty-six degree weather like hot chocolate. except whisky. and i’ll add that layer after i get off work.

i woke up this morning at 9am. okay fine, 9:30am. mostly, i woke up because i was hungry. i neglected to eat dinner last night because i fell asleep. i awoke a few times in the middle of the night and thought about eating something, but ultimately i decided that since i so rarely have a full night’s sleep, i should go ahead and ride it out.

a full night’s sleep didn’t really make me feel “rested.” i mean, i had a shitload of dreams, most of them mundane. but it’s not like i woke up and was like, “boy, i sure did have a good night’s rest. let’s start the day.” though i was less inclined to snooze-button for an hour.

i stood up and convinced myself that i was awake. it was chilly and crisp. i could sense cool air being held at bay by my windows. and i came to the half-conscious conclusion that a portion of the light-headedness i was experiencing might be attributed to hunger.

i rarely eat breakfast. usually, i have a cup of coffee. maybe some candy, or potato chips, or basically whatever is lying around that doesn’t require any preparation.

but this morning i was excited because of a rare combination of circumstances. i was hungry for breakfast. and i had breakfast materials in my fridge.

so there i was cracking open eggs into a bowl for imminent scrambling. the first egg was uneventful. crack, bloop, egg yolk. all as it should be.

but along comes the second egg. crack, bloop, “what the fuck?!”

there was blood in my egg. in the egg yolk there was a disproportionate amount of blood. because normally, there should be none. but in this egg, there was blood. there was also yolk. there was that yellow blob. but the surrounding egg-white wasn’t really clear or yellow-tinted. it was tinted red. or red-ish, i suppose. and on top of that, there was a small concentrated liquid mass of “not-egg-white” that had the color and consistency of blood.

the point is there was blood in my motherfucking eggs.

for a second i tried to scoop out the blood. but then some part of my brain took over. “what the fuck are you doing?” i dumped the contents of the bowl into the disposal. i actually had to take a moment to compose myself.

first, i confirmed in my head that this had actually just happened. yes. there was just blood in that egg. you weren’t imagining it.

next, for some reason i tried to search my memory for what blood in eggs might indicate or foretell. i had some vague recollection of some voodoo ceremony from a movie where there was blood in an egg. but since i couldn’t reassemble the full context of the scene, it was no help to me.

was it an omen? was it bad luck? am i going to die today? i was pretty sure it wasn’t a good thing. generally, good omens don’t come floating in blood. i had no actual knowledge upon which to base this assertion, but it seemed reasonable.

the second attempt at making scrambled eggs was bloodless. the toast too.

i sat there dazed, eating my breakfast, the autumn morning tranquility marred by an egg of potential evil prophecy.

i’m proud of my ethnic background. i’m filipino, and halfway around the world there’s a nation of islands populated by people with whom i share a cultural heritage: customs, traditions, modes of thought. i’ve been to the philippines on multiple occasions, and (once you leave the polluted metroplexes) it’s beautiful. out in the provinces you can find lushgreen tropical plantlife stretching far off into the mountain skyline horizon. you can meet people so genuine and well-meaning, they reaffirm your belief in humanity’s potential.

but i can’t, for the life of me, figure out what kind of crackrock they’re smoking over there thesedays.

i went to houston this past weekend for a formal family gathering. it was a fun time as far as those things go. but… they played this song…

you see, apparently there’s this song that’s popular in the philippines, and it has an accompanying… well, “dance,” for lack of a better term… and…

you know what, here, just watch this video right quick. just trust me.

this is, i assume, the official music video for this pop tune. it’s really fucking annoying, let me just say that from the get-go. but stick with it at least through the first chorus. the shit starts to pop off around 1:10.

(click here.)

alright, if you managed to get through the whole thing, just take a breather for a second and try to regain some sense of reality. just breathe.

no, no, don’t press play again, you’re not ready. you don’t want to overdose.

my brother showed me this video before we went to the family party, so i was at least somewhat braced. but still, the first time i saw the video, i believe my exact reaction was, “what the fuck?!” followed shortly by “this is so so wrong.”

let’s just start with certain parts of the video.

it’s the kids that really unsettle me. the kindergarden class or whatever. i don’t know if i’m just getting older, but really, what are we teaching our children? won’t anybody think of the children?

the fish. the fish surprises me every fucking time. because by the time you’re halfway into the video, you’re either nauseous or your mind is so blown you cannot look away. then, bam, the damn fish. it’s like after i’ve watched the video, my mind can only process so much, so the memory of the fish is cast aside. every fucking time.

okay, anyway. so i’m at the family party. you know how these things go, bad music but good times. someone’s uncle is out there dancing to bad commercial hiphop; snappin’ fingers, poppin’ collars, whatever. clusters of teenagers testing the thin line between dancing and dry-humping.

then they played the song. they played “otso-otso.”

and the place. went. apeshit.

it was like one of those choreographed scenes from one of those high-school coming-of-age movies. you know, where the entire graduating class apparently had the time to put together a dance routine, because, you know, people just do that sort of thing.

it was… shocking. i couldn’t even laugh. my brain just skipped right past hysterical laughter and went straight to stunned eyes-wide silence. thankfully i was sitting down at the time, or i might have passed out. people stormed the fucking dancefloor. old people, young people. giddy, hands on their thighs, popping the smalls of their backs. singing along.

i should’ve snapped a picture, but my limbs wouldn’t respond. shit, my brain wouldn’t respond. i was watching everything happen, and i kept trying to take the images and sounds all in, but my brain just kept asking me, “but what does all this mean?”

i’ve been thinking about it all week; trying to make some sense of everything. but i don’t reach any conclusions. i don’t know if this is some sign of the apocalypse. i don’t know if this is some thinly-disguised vision of the future where everyone is happy and gyrating to bastard incarnations of afrika bambaataa’s planet rock. i really don’t even know how i feel about it.

but i want it on vinyl.