How to Finish a Novel Without Reading

You do not really have to strain your eyes just to finish a novel. Or a book, for that matter. Anyway, you do not remember everything you read.

Just download an audiobook. Librivox.org offers you free audiobooks which you can download through your web browser. But I prefer going kickasstorrents.com. (You will know why once you start downloading yourself.)

Once you get to kickasstorrents.com, just type the title of the book that you want to download. Click on the 'music' and 'others' category.

You will be given several results, pretty much what you see when you search in Google. Click on the result which has the highest number of seeds. Here's a simple formula: the more seeds = faster download; many leechers = slow download.

A file that has so many leechers takes forever to download. Make sure that the number of leechers is not greater than the number of seeds or you will never get your file.

By the way, you will need uTorrent for this one. Just go to their site and download it. It's pretty much just like Limewire, although it is a lot faster to download. It will not take more than 59 seconds.

Since we are now talking about download, please leave a comment if you want to know how to make your Internet connection 20% faster. I am not sure if many people would get interested in this but it does work.

Thanks for finishing this post, now you can go listen to an audiobook and skip all the reading.

Free Meal at Ayala

Let me go a little out of my blog's theme. It seems that you spend too much money surfing the Net that you do not eat lunch anymore.

The good news is: CONVERGYS offers free meal to job applicants. Here are the details:

Yellow Cab, Ayala Mall
from August 10 to 21
Mondays to Fridays
10 am to 6pm

Dunkin Donuts, Ayala Mall
from August 3 to 14
Mondays to Fridays
10 am to 6pm


No need to bring cash but you need a resume, pen, and ID.
Just pretend that you are really interested in the job. A free meal is too good to miss. Plus, applying for a call center job makes you look a little smarter.

To find out more about job openings, go to www.convergys.com/careers.

I'm not sure what kind of meal they offers so please leave a comment and give us a clue.


Remember: it's not about the job, it's all about the FREE meal.

Some of the Crazy Things I Do in YM

I'm crazy, I admit that. Being crazy is not a crime and it can also help keep you from being legally held should you commit a crime. Below is one of my conversations in YM. (I am symptomsofdeath there).


symptomsofdeath: what's to be proud about it?

aprilofasialovefred: cuz i'm pinoy

symptomsofdeath: what about it? proud to be from an illigitimate race of people?

aprilofasialovefred: i just love it

symptomsofdeath: where are you in the US?

symptomsofdeath: do you go around telling everyone there that you are pinoy?

aprilofasialovefred: i just want to be here

aprilofasialovefred: nope

symptomsofdeath: i mean, where ka sa US

aprilofasialovefred: tennessee

symptomsofdeath: i'm proud of being a loser.

symptomsofdeath: i even tell my neighbor's dog about it

symptomsofdeath: tennesee? do you waltz?

aprilofasialovefred: hehehe

aprilofasialovefred: no

aprilofasialovefred: i love country music

symptomsofdeath: is fred, in anyway, related to jason?

symptomsofdeath: i love alan jackson

symptomsofdeath: and JM montgomery

aprilofasialovefred: yes i love alan jackson too

aprilofasialovefred: yes his related to jason

aprilofasialovefred: he is

aprilofasialovefred: related

symptomsofdeath: how come they quarrel?

symptomsofdeath: and they even made a movie about it

aprilofasialovefred: they're brothers

symptomsofdeath: i love "livin' on love"

symptomsofdeath: "sunday morning church"

aprilofasialovefred: yes

aprilofasialovefred: wait i gotta go pee

symptomsofdeath: "coz they took all that he believed, and laid it in the ground"

symptomsofdeath: ok..

aprilofasialovefred: i'm back

symptomsofdeath: i'm front. nice to meet you back

symptomsofdeath: how's it going BACK there

aprilofasialovefred: nice back here front

symptomsofdeath: gee, lot's o' thin's happen in the backseat tis days

aprilofasialovefred: yeah i know

symptomsofdeath: seriously

symptomsofdeath: "coz they took all that he believed, and laid it in the ground"

symptomsofdeath: that's from an alan jackson song

symptomsofdeath: girl dies, guy hates god

aprilofasialovefred: uh huh

symptomsofdeath: that's what i love about country music

symptomsofdeath: there's a plot

aprilofasialovefred: yes

symptomsofdeath: unlike pop that talks about poker, disco sticks, and garage stuff

symptomsofdeath: all the time

symptomsofdeath: at least, in country music, people die or hate each other

aprilofasialovefred: why you think they do?

symptomsofdeath: well, they are more expressive

symptomsofdeath: that means they aren't repressed psychos like priests and mormons

aprilofasialovefred: i know

symptomsofdeath: city got thugs, country got cowboys

symptomsofdeath: city got wanted list, country got devils on the run

aprilofasialovefred: what city in the philippines you are from/

aprilofasialovefred: ?

symptomsofdeath: city got cops to arrest criminals, country got sherriffs to knob
outlaws

symptomsofdeath: cebu

symptomsofdeath: you?

aprilofasialovefred: silingan ra ta

symptomsofdeath: asa mn ka?

aprilofasialovefred: cebu

Top Ten Love Poems

One

Every line of this poem is worth quoting. One cannot read the first line and not wish to continue. Youmust have first heard this poem from the song “The First Time I Loved Forever.”

somewhere i have never travelled
by e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

_____


Two

True love survives pain. But a truer one reaches old age and yet do not fade—even if that love is not requited.

When You are Old
by William Butler Yeats

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

_____

Three

A lover would not ask so much but a little reward for his love. Yet, he would exchange everything, just for an ephemeral being.

To Celia
by Ben Jonson

Drink to me, only with thine eyes
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine:
But might I of Jove's nectar sup
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be
But thou thereon didst only breath
And sent'st it back to me:
Since, when it grows and smells, I swear,
Not of itself but thee.

_____

Four

The entirely beautiful: the eyes see flaws, but not the heart that loves. Long this poem maybe, but each verse an infinity of meaning and feeling.

Lullaby
by W. H. Auden

Lay Your Sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm:
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy,

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost.
All the dreaded cards foretell.
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought.
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

_____

Five

"The depth and breadth and height" of love can never be contained in lines and rhymes. Yet they can still be rendered beautifully, as Elizabeth Browning does:

How do I love thee?
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

_____

Six

They say that marriage is the perfection of love. Our dear poet finds her bliss in her husband and wishes to carry it eternally.

To My Dear and Loving Husband
by Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

_____

Seven

To be bound yet never wishing to be free, to know what is wrong and still desire to do it: could this be your poem?

Enthralled
by Alfred Bryan

TEACH me to sin--
In love's forbidden ways,
For you can make all passion pure;
The magic lure of your sweet eyesEach shape of sin makes virtue praise.

Teach me to sin--
Enslave me to your wanton charms,
Crush me in your velvet arms
And make me, make me love you.
Make me fire your blood with new desire,
And make me kiss you--lip and limb,
Till sense reel and pusles swim.
Aye! even if you hate me,
Teach me to sin.

_____

Eight

Poets desire to craft a verse that can defy time and carry their love throughout centuries. The English poet shows you how:

One Day I Wrote Her Name
by Edmund Spenser


One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain essay
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise."
"Not so," quoth I; "let baser things devise
To lie in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write you glorious name:
Where, whenas Death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."

_____

Nine

Whoever finds beauty and never falls in love? Or whoever loves that does not find beauty? Fleeting might beauty be, but the love it inspires can transcend the eternal.

Beauty and Love
by Andrew Young

Beauty and love are all my dream;
They change not with the changing day;
Love stays forever like a stream
That flows but never flows away;

And beauty is the bright sun-bow
That blossoms on the spray that showers
Where the loud water falls below,
Making a wind among the flowers.

_____

Ten

Did we not all want to be Shakespeare when we first fell in love?

Sonnet 18
by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

A Crime Against Andrew Marvell

image from http://rlv.zcache.com

You read him in your basic English course, probably as early as high school. Now I'm here to express my opinion of his text. Below is a protion of "To His Coy Mistress", followed by my own rendition. (Andrew, I know you are already resting in peace but literature teachers won't let you. So allow me to express my view).

To His Coy Mistress"
by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love's day;

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood;

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow.

_____________________________________

The Lady's Reply to a Prick

Indeed, we have not world enough and time,

But thy hastiness is a greater crime.

For once I go with thee to thine way,

I greatly doubt if I could still run away.

For I would rather have worms try my virginity,

Than be with a man who is not for me.

Wait longer before thy pleasures could have,

But if thou cannot wait for my love,

Leave me to the worms to rot and there I shall stay:

Thy vegetable love will rot sooner anyway.

Expectations

“High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.”
Charles F. Kettering

Expectation. The biggest “E” after earth. Probably larger than it. Everybody is just dying to meet other people’s expectations; as if they’d literally drop dead if they could not.

There is always an expectation to live up to. People make their expectation on us (and we make ours on theirs), primarily on age and social status. You probably have been hit by a chalk when you could not recite the whole multiplication table to your 3rd grade teacher.

When I was in college, you are always expected to act “decent”: you should not eat while walking; girls cannot comb their hair in public; you cannot go to the motel if you are still wearing the school uniform.

I’m not encouraging those things, especially the last one, but those expectations are plain hypocrisy. It’s just a bunch of crap that old people, called the faculty, pass on to students, so they can finally have their revenge on society.

If somebody tells you that you are not behaving as you are expected to do, raise your middle finger and say: I expect you to shut up because you are a moron.
People who believe in expectations are fixated losers. Every human being is supposed to be rational, and as a part of that exclusively human agenda, we are all expected to use our brain.

Expecting someone to be like everybody else in a group is called moronic thinking. It’s thinking, but moronic nonetheless. Not exactly the best way to use one’s head. The best that you can do is stop pressuring other people because of your expectations.

I’m sorry Charlie, but I’m just glad that you’re dead now.

The Bone Beneath the Skin

How I got it
Last July 3, I broke three fingers when I fell off my bike. I ran into a railing that was placed on the road. I did not see it right away so I ran into it. It was 5:30 am. The sun has not shone yet, the railing was rusty, and it was in the middle of the national highway, occupying about half of the northbound lane. You probably get what I mean.

What you ought to do if you were in my place
The first thing that you should do is never to be in my place. But if you get into an accident, do not panic, unless you get run over by a bus rushing at 80 miles per hour. That is so not cool. But aside from that, you can easily provide first aid treatment to yourself (quit calling your Momma).
In less than half a second after I ran into the railing, I already had a fourth joint in my finger. I straightened the fracture right away. The doctor said that was the right thing to do.
When I set out on my trip, I had every tool that I might need to fix my bike, but none to fix myself. When you go out mountain biking, it is imperative that you bring a first aid kit with you. Don’t be bothered if that makes you look like the medic guy back in high school.

Stuff these in your cycling jersey
Most bicycle injuries include fracture and wounds, so these are all you will most likely need:
adhesive tape
sterile gauze
antiseptic solution (povidone iodine or hydrgen peroxide)
pain reliever

Should you break your finger
Pull them gently forward to straighten your bones. Apply ice on the swollen part but use a towel or your cycling bandana. Never ever place ice directly on your skin. You saw what happened to Jack in Titanic, right?
Take some pain reliever to ease the pain. You can use ibuprofen but I recommend tramadol hydrochloride because it is more potent. I’m not a doctor, of course, so you can make your own prescriptions to yourself, too.
After that, go to the funeral home or the hospital; whichever suits you. But I recommend the ER since you would rather be with pretty nurses than bide your time with freaky embalmers.

Final words
Don’t stop biking. I broke three fingers but I still have 7 more, so why should I stop? Dog tags may come in handy should you lose consciousness. Wear one and do not miss the chance to feel like a Navy Seal. Do not ask me where to get one. Your mini pincher probably knows. Finally, don’t be a LOSER. Do not blame the trail or the stupid railing. You’re the one who got yourself there so for once in your life (which is about to end), TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.