Nevergirl’s

I learned drama, Shakespeare, grammar, literary devices, and how to fall in love with the written and spoken word in high school. That sentence violates parallelism, by the way, but let’s leave it alone. We’ve far more important things to talk about, like the future of English classes.

In the future, students won’t be memorizing Brutus’ Defense or reading Shakespeare’s plays. Instead, they will be busy acquiring tools to make their tweets come to life with wit. They will learn how to craft Facebook status updates that ooze with dramatic absurdity and glibness. They will be taught how to make their tweets personal and honest:

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“Scrumptious,” Aileen whispered when the guy by the bar asked Mimi for her name. I snickered but thought it was a good idea. So, when it was my turn to get coffee, I told the guy the iced double chocolate is for “Scrumptious.”

“Anything else, Miss Scrumptious?” he asked, looking and sounding like the words were being choked out of him.

“Well, yes, mineral water please,” I said. Behind me, Aileen was doubling over with laughter. So was Malou when she learned of the story. When it was time for the staff to call out my name (a.k.a Scrumptious), I swear, they cringed! We were seated near enough the bar so we could hear their timidly said, “Double chocolate for Scrumptious!”

“Here!” I said, waving my hand at the attendant. Of course, it didn’t help that Malou was laughing like mad and Aileen just had to go take photos of a neatly scrawled ‘Scrumptious’ on the lid.

That little coffee shop incident is now giving me ideas. I don’t go to Coffee Dream, Starbucks, or even Bo’s because I’m cheap like that. It pains me to pay P150 for coffee. The only time I go there is when I’m with friends – and the fun, fun, fun conversation we have makes the P150 well-worth the price. I think I’m changing my mind about frequenting coffee shops as I write this entry, though. These coffee shops, they’re a treasure of a place! Where else can you get away with telling people your name is Audrey Hepburn? For the price of a latte, people will humor you and call out “Ms. Hepburn! Double chocolate latte for Ms. Hepburn!”

So, just so you know, I have decided it’s high time my split personalities and I stop going around the neighborhood looking for people to beat up. We will go to coffee shops instead and order iced coffee for

1. Cinderella
2. Her Majesty
3. Free.

Posted in Beautiful people, Oddities | 2 Comments »

Will you give your graduate the gift of surgery? Do you really have the funds, the liberalism, and the moxie to go, “Congratulations, daughter. Here’s money for a new nose.”?

If you answered yes just for the sheer fun of it, you’re not alone. Parents are actually giving their graduates the gift of surgery, and the number of parents who do this has grown. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, teens comprise two percent of cosmetics surgery patients in the U.S. In 2006 alone, 244,124 teens went under the knife for various procedures. Think 9,000 kids aged 13 to 19 getting breast implants. Think 47,000 of the same age group getting Jersey plastic surgery for a nose job.

If you’re appalled by those figures, here’s one more piece of statistic that makes it even worse: the number of teens who actually get the gift of cosmetics surgery is only a fraction of those who asked for it.

Back in my time, photo albums, dresses, books, and pieces of jewelry counted as presents. Today, academic achievement is rewarded with a boob job or a nip or tuck. These are strange times we live in.

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Source: Way to go, grad! Here’s a check for a new nose
2008, MSNBC Interactive

Posted in Elsewhere in the universe, Oddities, While on baby leave | 3 Comments »

I’m not a fan of self-help books because I’ve always believed they’re 80% fluff and only 20% sense. Then, too, I resent being told what to do, so there’s really no point in shelling out money for a book that would only boss me around, is there?

Recently, however, I’ve discovered a new hobby: scouring Amazon.com for self-help manuals with titles that are neither here nor there. These titles leave me chuckling, and wanting to write the content myself – mentally, anyway. When it comes to writing, I’m 80% wild imaginings and 20% actual work. Still, these books should be a good buy, more so because their titles alone are worth their price in chuckles.

1. How to Become a Schizophrenic
For a book with such a whack title, this one is very, very insightful. The author uses the ideas of various experts, melds it with his own experiences, and creates a theory why and how he and countless others become schizophrenic.

2. How to Read a Book
First published in 1940, this book is that rarest of rare tomes – a bestseller, a living classic. The title might seem whack but the content is anything but. The authors discuss the various levels of reading and how you can achieve them: elementary reading, inspectional reading, systematic skimming, speed reading, abstraction – you name it, the book covers it.

3. How to Start Your Own Country
Is it possible to start your own country? Erwin Strauss answers yes, and then proceeds to explain how. Strauss details everything a future country owner should know – from national defense and diplomacy to the training of plumbers and the recruitment of settlers.

4. How to Rent a Negro
All blacks, says Damali Ayo, have at some point in their lives either been the rented or the renter. Ayo then proceeds to enumerate a range of social issues that illustrate her point from the way fair skin continues to be a universal barometer for beauty to police’s, co-workers’, and neighbor’s blatant racial profiling. As a bonus, Ayo includes a quiz readers can take to determine whether they’re renter or the rented.

5. How to Speak with the Dead: A Practical Handbook
Yes, this book outlines how and why people communicate with the dead. If you’re tempted to read this book, however, you should first buy You Know You’re a Few Apples Short of the Pie When You Feel Like Speaking to the Dead. But I’m not sure that how-to guide has been written.

These titles, they’re brilliant marketing tools. They leave me itching to go Ebay-bidding. That, or start the draft for How to Win the Lotto without Buying a Ticket.

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How do you name your kids? Do you trawl through a dictionary? Google? Leave it to grandparents who believe themselves entitled to hock their antediluvian names off to an unsuspecting grandchild? Or do you call a family powwow and vote over which names sound the grandest, the most pompous?

No matter how you do it, be very, very careful what you name your child with. Eccentricity could cost parents child custody. In New Zealand, a nine-year-old was made a ward of court so she could change the name she had been socially handicapped with – Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.

Said Judge Rob Murfitt, “The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child’s parents have shown in choosing this name. It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily.”

For all Judge Murfitt’s sympathetic posteuring, however, courts could still not claim consistency over their decision to accept or trash names. For example, the following names which parents have picked out for their children were condemned as detrimental to a child’s well-being:

1. Yeah Detroit
2. Sex Fruit
3. Fish and Chips
4. Stallion
5. Keenan Got Lucy
6. Twisty Poi

The following names, on the other hand, are deemed admissible by the courts and could thus be foisted by parents onto their children:

1. Number 16 Bus Shelter
2. tragically, Violence
3. Midnight Chardonnay

I wonder if some people name their children while they’re on crack. The weirdness is not an isolated case, that’s for sure, what with Filipino parents casually scarring their children for life with names like Bonifacia, Hesusa, and Potenciano. Come to think of it, these names almost make Alex’s (Layne Nozomi Alexandrie) sound like garden variety.

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