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August 24, 2006. The nine planets became eight. Yes, Pluto, the most distant planet from the Sun, was kicked out of the planetary club, with other members being Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto is now considered a “dwarf planet”. Planetary discrimination, anyone? Anyway, the resolution for a new definition of a planet by the International Astronomical Union (or N.A.M.B.L.A.), which effectively kicked out Pluto from our solar system’s planetary club, clearly hurt Pluto’s feelings. What do the other planets say about this expulsion?

Mercury: Well, we were never really that close. We’re actually the two members who are the most distant to each other, so I don’t give a rat’s butt.

Venus: It’s, like, so sad, you know? To lose, like, someone who’s been there for you for a long time? He’s like a younger brother to me and Earth, you know? Of course, a younger brother is always a loser. I mean, come on. His name was given to him by a young girl named Venetia. Venetia! Like, whatever.

Earth: Pluto sucks. I’ve got the International Astronomical Union (or N.A.M.B.L.A.), and he has methane gas. What a loser. My moon can kick his 3 moons’ collective ass!

Mars: What Earth said, beeyotch. And about the part about moons? I’ve got two. They can go tag team wrestling on Pluto’s ass! Plus, they call me “The Red Planet”. They call Pluto “Mickey’s stupid dog”. Pfft.

Jupiter: Dude. My Great Red Spot is bigger than Earth. How am I supposed to notice that there are 9 of us? Lame.

Saturn: There are 9 of us?! WTF?!

Uranus: Well, I’d rather get out of this stupid planetary club crap than to keep this stupid name. I’m the freakin’ butt of every planet-related joke! Look! I even made a joke about myself! “Venetia” is sounding really good right now.

Neptune: I’ll miss the little guy. It’ll make me more blue. *snicker*

And what does Pluto say about this?

Pluto: You’re all full of gas and fickle scientists!!! Fuck you guys, I’m going home!

The Sun just shrugs and revels in the fact that these nine idiots’ lives revolve around him.

Sun: Frickin’ idiots.

This is not a “review” of the APO Hiking Society tribute album entitled Kami nAPO Muna. Not a review because I’m not a music expert. This is merely a… umm… uhh… a constructive evaluation from a simple music fan’s point of view? Whatever dude.

The album is most probably a way to recreate the success of the tribute album to the Eraserheads, UltraElectroMagneticJam! released last year. It also features several artists who did renditions for the said Eheads tribute album.

Before I dive right into my stupid “evaluation”, I’d just like to say I’m very glad there’s no Cueshe here. Any Cueshe fans out there? Okay. For those 2 people raising their hands, I’m sorry for the comment. But they ruined the Eheads tribute album. Really.

Okay. Now for the evaluation…

Pumapatak Ang Ulan by Parokya ni Edgar - Good start for the album. Gives you the feeling of strumming away on the guitar during a rainy day. Very comforting and easy to listen to.

Yakap sa Dilim by Orange & Lemons - It reminds me of the Eraserheads’ “Kailan” song, but with an APO feel. Two thumbs up for the retro-haired dudes!

Doo Bidoo by Kamikazee - I’m torn with this one. This rendition is good, but it just clashes with the original. It’s probably because of their natural sound. Loud. And I don’t like how they say “doo bidoo bidoo, bidoo bidoo…” but overall, the track is okay.

Awit ng Barkada by Itchyworms - The ‘Worms capture APO quite nicely. One of my favorite APO songs, I think it was done justice. It’s nice to sing this with your barkada during moni sessions.

Nakapagtataka by Sponge Cola - A decent rendition from a band that I practice selective hearing on. It would have been better if a female artist did this one. But it’s an okay version methinks.

Ewan by Imago - Just like their performance in the Eraserheads tribute album, Imago interpreted this APO song quite nicely. They made it their own, added a little bit of flair, and turned the song into something else. Love it.

Batang-bata Ka Pa by Sugarfree - A very nice fusion of APO and Sugarfree sounds. Never liked the song really, but Sugarfree made it more interesting. Kudos!

Kumot at Unan by Boldstar - I have to admit, I’ve never heard of this APO song before. And quite frankly, I’ve never heard of Boldstar either. Must watch Myx and MTV more. Anyway, the song is nice to hear, but it bores me.

When I Met You by Barbi Almalbis - What can I say? I never liked her bit in the Eraserheads tribute album, and I’m not changing my mind with this one. I even like Sarah Geronimo’s version of the song more. Sarah freaking Geronimo. Barbi should just stick with performing the songs she wrote.

Bakit ang Babae by Sandwich - Like the band. Don’t like the song. The end product? An unlikable rendition of an APO song. Well, at least for me.

Kabilugan ng Buwan by Drip - This is the first time I’ve heard the song. And this is the first time I’ve heard of the band Drip. I think I like them. I’ll be placing them on my “LimeWire list”. Hehe. Anyway, they give a lot of soul into the song. It sounds old school. One of my favorite tracks on the album.

Di na Natuto by Sound - Boring band name. Boring rendition of a cool and smooth APO song. It doesn’t live up to the original.

Anna by Top Suzara - Surprisingly, the more I hear the song, the more I like it. It has a catchy chorus. It grows on you. The only all-English song I like on the album.

Blue Jeans by Rocksteddy - I love the original, but I also love this. It captures the anthem feel of the APO original. It’s rockin’. Thumbs up, dudes.

Panalangin by Moonstar88 - Probably my favorite APO song, I’m glad it was done great by Moonstar88. I still like the original better though. This one almost sounds like a lullabye. But surprisingly not boring for me.

Paano by Shamrock - Great lyrics. Great song. Great execution by a band I’m hearing for the first time. The rendition stays true to the spirit of the APO original. Applause.

Pag-ibig by Kitchie Nadal - I was turned off by her Eraserheads tribute album song, but I’ve fallen in love with Kitchie again. She brings her soothing voice and rythyms to this APO song quite nicely. Iniibig na muli kita, binibining Nadal.

Bawa’t Bata by The Dawn - A nice ending for the album, this version of the song acts as a cool bookend together with Parokya’s track. The Dawn can still rock it as hard as the rest of ‘em. They managed to bring energy to a whimsical song of APO. Nice.

Overall, a solid musical experience. It would have been nice if APO did a collaboration with an artist or two on a couple of songs here. What would be cooler is if APO did a tribute album to the Eraserheads, and vice versa. A 2-disc special edition album. That would be awesome.

I love the rain. The gloomy weather. The cold smugness of my bed. Whenever it’s raining, I get the urge to stay in my bed and indulge in my guilty pleasures like watching a DVD movie and its extras, reading comic books or graphic novels, and being alone. Yes, being alone in my cold bed during a downpour is one of my guilty pleasures. That’s why I love the rain.

Yesterday, it was raining a lot. I would have stayed all day in my bed, but I had something else that needed to be done. I had to canvass for a private resort in Pansol for our team building on Saturday. It’s probably our last team building with our current team leader. It has to be special. So we’re going all out on food, alcohol, amenities, alcohol, food, and alcohol. Hehe.

I went to Alabang first to purchase some stuff for my rainy day lovefest with myself. I got a copy of the latest issue of DC Comic’s 52 (a weekly comic book!), a copy of Y: The Last Man: Cycles (the 2nd collected edition of the Y: The Last Man comic book series which I totally dig right now), a copy of the Kami nAPO Muna tribute album to the APO Hiking Society, and a DVD of George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead (zombies are frickin’ awesome!). I’m going to write reviews on these purchases in the near future because they’re so frickin’ cool.

On the way to Pansol, I listened to my new CD. I fell in love with Imago. Awesome rendition of “Ewan”. Anyway, listening to the whole album made me want to go straight to UPLB and start a moni session with my brods and sisses at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. As I canvassed Miramonte for 3 private resorts with clean comfort rooms (a requirement by my team lead. hahaha!), I decided not to go to LB and just go home to commence my rainy day lovefest with myself. 2 pm moni sessions will have to wait for another time.

After eating lunch, I was supposed to watch Land of the Dead, but I saw they were showing 50 First Dates on HBO. I decided to watch it first (for the 1,396,150th time!) before I wet myself with Mr. Romero’s zombiefest. I read the Y: The Last Man graphic novel during the movie because it was making me want to hold somebody, and that’s not good if you’re alone during a rainy day. After the Sandler-Barrymore movie, I went straight to the gory masterpiece of Mr. Romero. And after that, I watched all the DVD extras. The rainy day lovefest with myself was a success!

I can enjoy a rainy day with friends and loads of alcohol. I can enjoy it cuddling with someone under the bed sheets. I can enjoy it by myself with all my guilty pleasures. Whatever I’m doing and whomever I’m doing it with, I can enjoy the gloom of a rainy day. That’s why I love it. If only I can will it to rain whenever I feel like it, that’ll be orgasmic.

Now, before you say this is another one of those blog entries that say the author’s spirit/heart is broken and it needs mending/healing, I’ll tell you otherwise. The title refers to the things around me. Yes. The TV. The PC. And stuff. Things. My soul and my heart are fine. Thank you for the concern. I’m now dealing with the frustration of having stuff around me not working properly.

The first one to give out is my TV. It happened during one of the recent thunderstorms. I love the weather. Cold. Wet. Mildly depressing. Perfect for staying in and sleeping the hours away, or going out to have a few (okay, a lot of) alcoholic beverages with friends. But I hated the stormy weather when it caused these stupid electrical surges that made my TV go kaput. I have to slam it a few times before it works. Most of the time, it just gives me a white line across the screen and some audio. It’s not fun to catch lingerie shows on FTV with only the audio on.

Our family PC also went haywire, but not because of the weather. Or maybe it was. I’m not sure. All I know is it just stopped working. It was an old system. We have DSL, but most of the time, it worked like dial-up. It was probably nature’s (or technology’s?) way of telling us to get a new computer. And we did. Yesterday, I spent almost the whole day on setting up this new PC complete with a new LCD monitor, an 80 GB hard drive, 512 RAM, and a Pentium 4 processor. I had to bear hearing Christy Fermin’s voice while she’s on The Buzz (don’t ask) while I was installing a million things on this new PC. Hello, better and faster computing. Goodbye, old files. Sigh.

One other broken thing is yUPieLBi.com. I’m very frustrated with the website right now. With its first few months, all I had to contend with is the fact that I had to use my programming skills (hahaha!) to make the simplest of changes. But recently, due to high traffic and very busy site activity, I’ve encountered bandwidth and server issues almost weekly. The site suffered a couple of downtimes before I finally decided to rebuild it from scratch. It’s now temporarily dead. The site is a community site so even though I’m not being paid for putting it up (I’m actually the one putting out dough to keep it up), I’m obliged to bring it back and make sure it stays online because a lot of people feel the atmosphere of UPLB in yUPieLBi.com. And we eLBizens love our UPLB.

With all of these broken things around me, I get frustrated, yes. But not depressed. I’m okay with my TV being replaced by an old one (it flickers like hell and it’s in constant “sepia mode”) that was just lying around in my old room, but I hope it’s temporary. I’m very happy with the new family PC, eventhough I lost some of my files and bookmarks from the old one (good thing I have some of them backed up in the PC in my room). And I’m very optimistic that yUPieLBi.com will live again, hopefully in the near future.

Being broken is temporary. Broken things can be replaced, upgraded, and even completely torn down to be rebuilt again better than before. Can’t do that with your heart and your soul. Well, technically, with your heart, you can. But I’m going out of context here so I’ll just go back to work on yUPieLBi.com now.