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m,

 

i am happy that you've found the right one for you, i hope. although, she seems not to my liking, looking strange at me, resentful of me. i meant to tell her we've known each other since '93, all 13 years we've been friends (and lovers at one time). just to take that smirk off her face.

 

finally, you've listened to what i told you - to find a girl. finally, thank god!

 

but you could have told her i've rejected you several times recently, over 3 years you've been wanting to have me again. that ought to have put her in her place.

 

but! yes, there's no room for that. a brave girl like her, to take you, with your heavy baggages need to be given a break.

 

and i wish you both good luck.

 

(ana, the jock has found a girl! no kidding!)

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(21st August - the fall of Ninoy)

 

Uncle Leon Aday, Jr.

 

We called him, simply, Uncle Junior. Distantly related to my grandad, they had worked together for nearly 50 years.

 

While I spent my childhood summers in a huge old house overlooking the national road, he stayed in a much humbler abode, amongst the many simple houses we overlooked from our balcony. Fate made him a very poor relation. He took his lot in stride.

 

He worked for my Lolo those many years as the right hand man and the intermediary to all the other farm labourers. He drew no extra allowance, just the meager pay of a mere farmhand, despite our distant relationship and his added duties. He never asked for more.

 

I spent so many youthful summers at his house, playing with his barefoot kids. I never realized till I was much older that he would lay out the best food he could scrounge from his little plot if he knew I was coming over to visit, even if next day his own little family would end up eating poorly! How I shudder whenever I remember making small complaints on the tuyo he would serve. The lash of that inner embarrasment stings even now, twenty five years later, and shall sting forever.

 

The sun-burned dark brown of his skin contrasted so sharply with the permanent fair red flush of my face, in the same way my world of guns, tinted cars, and plane tickets contrasted so much with the many sun-hot kilometers he had to walk every day in his duties for us, saving jeep fare money to give to his kids. Only a quirk of fate, generations ago, had prevented me from sharing his lot.

 

I smell native tobacco, and I remember him. I taste simple garlic-fried rice eaten with no ulam, just coffee, and I recall him.

 

When I began take my place in the hierarchy, I tried to reward him in some way. But it was too late. A lifetime of cheap cigarettes, poor diet, and repeated bouts of tropical fevers finally took their toll. A year after my own grandad passed away, he joined him. I told his poor and grieving family that those two were now "promoted to HQ" by the General, having each served their appointed duty in these harsh mortal realms. In broken whispers, I told them that Uncle Junior and Lolo were quietly chatting away in some cool spot under the trees in the heavenly fields, all cares forgotten, as they always did during their younger years. Probably wondering what all the ruckus is... through their tears, I drew out their smiles for you, Uncle.

 

We buried him in the distant blue hillsides, not far from my own great-grandad's grave. His family will always have a special connection to me, and the town knows this. For on the day of his burial, under the clear skies, completely blue horizon to horizon, I walked the last mile with you, my Uncle, upright and uncovered.

 

Uncle, remember when you taught me how to dig square and properly sized irrigation ditches for the huge ricefields? You had also taught me then never to impose burdens on another, that I could not have carried if I were in his shoes. Only then will that quiet growl of command be genuine.

 

Remember when you cooked for me what simple food you could muster when I was but a wide-eyed, brown-haired, inquisitive child? You had also taught me then to be prepared to eat and dress and live the very next moment as poorly as the least of my men. Only then will they follow me to the worst of places, to ride with me open eyed through one waiting ambush site after another, time after time, year after year, upon my word alone.

 

And above all I remember you, unknowingly, teaching me that on such strong and loyal backs as yours, did our family and this country build its first fortunes, and would rebuild its fortunes again. You pulled your weight and the weight of many others too. You taught me to respect the loyal, the hardworking, and the faithful. They are the ones who matter. They are the ones who change this world. Others do not matter,

 

and their fates do not concern me.

 

I am so sorry Uncle, that I was not able to pay you back enough for your many many lessons, and for all your unspoken love, for the way you called me "anak" and gave me your blessing everytime I left to go back to the city. I placed a handwritten note inside your coffin, by the way, pressed on your callused right hand. Show it to my Lolo, OK? Tell him, I myself have personally sent you on your way. Please tell him that I have kept doing what is expected of me, and that I have stayed simple.

 

He died at the time of year when the ricefields were golden, the bounty bursting the bodegas. He died at the time of abundant harvest, just when the fruits of his long labours had finally reached maturity, ready for the reaping.

 

Felix Villaflor IV

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Don't mind me and don't worry about me...you can turn away anytime you like....do you think now is a good time to do it? ...then go....and forget you ever met me. I'll be fine...as always. Who am I to even cause you this dilemma? I am nobody...I am worthlessly insignificant. I am who I used to be...I am who I'll always be...you can't hurt me anymore...that would be impossible...I am numb and I thrive in pain. I might k*ll myself one day but don't think it was all about you....don't be too sure of yourself. Yeah...I really think I love you...but what does it matter? you never loved me back anyway...so if you wanna go now...there are no walls or doors to hold you in.....just don't look back or wonder if I'll be allright....just go.

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Dear You......

 

Can't you be normal for once?....think like everyone else does...see life like them...be as happy and cheerful like them? Why are you so complicated? why must you complicate everything...why do your thoughts break you? why do you let your emotions get the best of you? Hush......be still...stop creating these monsters in your head.

 

:flowers:

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I've been sitting on my bed

With a glass on my hand

Tryin' to figure out a way for me to understand

Through this talk we've just had

The questions I have asked somebody yesterday

About the sign that's in your eyes

About the biggest smile

Or your facing away

Questions I have asked somebody how you feel

Only eyes reveal

Your answer's not for real

 

But I can't read you mind

Not this time

I just wanna know what you're going through

I don't feel wrong about asking you

But I can't read your mind

Not this time

 

There are times when you don't wanna say

That there are problems in your head that you can't explain

I have been that way

Baby there's a hug or a kiss or two

But not forever do

If only I'd reach you

 

Maybe I'm a child

Maybe I'm a woman

Maybe I am old

Maybe I said something

Reasons, to push me away

Maybe I have laughed

Maybe I have cried

But never did I try

To put hurt on your side

 

I can't read your mind

Not this time

 

i wont give up.

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For the longest time, I thought love was a feeling; the more intense, the more true. For that feeling, I nearly tied the knot thrice. Fate, however, had other plans. Among them was an answer to a prayer that if our love, if either hers or mine, were anything short of the truth, let the nuptials no be so. Thus, none was. Thank you for that.

 

Then I tried to look for love in fleeting pleasures of the world, rewards for hard & smart work, things that envy people you for the more, friends that say what you always wished for... These things were no more than illusions, phantoms in the mist & islands of the lotus eaters. Ephemeral pleasures leave me wanting more. Rewards can be lost or broken. What people envy you for, they want & try to steal. Words as sweet as honey become substitutes to money when they can get what they want for free, in short, steal; fine words may not be true & true words may not be fine. Scary thing is, the world entraps, not frees people to pursue what ought to be & settle for the prison of just what is here & now. Thank you for the strength to unbind the rope & sever the shackles &, more importantly, the grace of the opportunity for a timely escape.

 

Then I believed love was the earnest desire to bring out the best in myself so that I can bring out the best in the other but if love was so selfless, why did I lose people I loved, not to death but to time? When I strive to excel, why did at times did they compete & feel & express envy & jealousy? I can only opine that perhaps they didn't love me at all. For that time, I may have served a purpose for them and, once served, they move on & leave me like an empty sack of rice.

 

For now, I opine, love is a collage of many factors, a cuisine of many fine ingredients that require carefully mixing & preparation and provides pleasure for the artist in the act of creation as well as the audience when beheld by the world. It may not even know reason or rhyme, but is tested by time, distance, deprivation & temptation of one or both broought about by tepidit, ennui & the pains of disappointment that the other was not quite the person expected to be.

 

Love isn't love when in one's heart it just stays. Love becomes love when it's given away but love isn't love when it's simply one way. Contrary to the caveat emptor of no return, no exchange, love is a return & exchange deal; it must be returned & must be exchanged. For that to work, it must be accepted & received.

 

That is perhaps where my shortcoming lay: to accept what I receive; to allow, to enable & to appreciate the other she may bring out the best in herself to bring out the best in me. Thank you for the grace of a mirror to see that the shortcoming in love is also in me.

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Dear_,

 

Would you be happier if i just forget these feelings i have for you...and accept you as a friend...? just a friend? would that make you feel better? Imagine this..... i won't stand so close to you anymore...i won't be saddened if we didn't talk...i won't miss you...and when you hear my voice...it'll be flat and deep....and when you look into my eyes...it'll be cold and indifferent....when i'm with..."if " i'm with you...you won't see me smiling like i used to...or burst into tears or break into uncontrollable fits of laughter....cuz...it's just you and my feelings for you that makes me feel this alive... this real. Would that make you happier? :(

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Ma'am,

 

You are offering me, effectively, to be a GM of Operations, 5th in command of that future multibillion dollar manufacturing complex down south, 8th in command of this MNC's entire local chapter. And a Director's seat, a full f#&k (full voting) Director's seat, on the Board of an oily MNC. Early next year too, soon after I turn 34; what a f#&king well-timed birthday gift. I asked you why, and you said, in a few words, that while we can live with shoddy infrastructure, faulty legislation, tight budgets, low profits, unprincipled competition, stupid government, even outright market reversals and losses, we however simply cannot live without the correct sort of bosses.

 

Our livelihood depends on them.

 

Such direct, old fashioned, un-buzzwords. You have found the necessary language to quickly get to the core of the more notorious of your captains of today. The arcane rules of this stingy company of course means that given relative youth and the non-allowance of multiple compensations, I will not get paid all that high, even compared to my present pay. But then long ago, you had already found the true coin of my currency,

 

And you are coming close to my price, ma'am. So very close.

 

I almost taste that aphrodisiac kick.

 

The many and manifold implications of accepting, or of rejecting, your proposition, to my MNC career, to my 2007/2010/2013 political prospects, to my MBA training and aspirations, to my personal (and sex?) life, to the next ten years to come, are complex, overlapping, and interwoven. Damned if I do, damned if I don't. At least, it is given me that luxury of choice; decades of training at the hands of masters teaches one to work unpaid overtime always preparing choices. For to catch luck, the net must be spread wide; like the well-parted long legs of them chicks getting their much-deserved, all-out, rock-hard, gut-honest dues.

 

For some silly reason the idea of having to, at long long last, give up plain Jags and Nikes and Casios and old style Raybans, for Zegnas and Omegas and Bally's, actually does carry some weight in my mind. The last son of feared, UP-bred rebel commanders who have fallen leading both the dirt-poor soldiers and the landless dispossessed, simply should never be caught so dressed-up. On the other hand, the latest version of those old-school V*******r warlords would be just as swaggeringly, comfortably at-home carrying on, as you may have guessed.

 

But these are petty concerns ma'am. You have given me 6 months to consider. And you would choose precisely this timing to ask, just when I am in the middle of a record breakingly big, tremendously busy, completely bareback gangbang of wickedly cunning work?

 

But of course,

 

Those who would deal with the overlords, cross them at great peril. One would hesitate even to barter.

 

LC

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you should know who you are,

 

thank you for making the days better...

thank you for making loong dragging days short...

thank you for making me laugh...

thank you for taking away my tired feeling with your smile...

thank you for all you sms reminders...

thank you for being in my life...

 

 

-xtn-

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I'm so sorry I was so confused since day1. But earlier tonight....I'm not sure what came over me....but suddenly I seem to think clearer about you and me now.Maybe it was the fact that I've been pressuring myself too much lately to make a hard and fast choice between my "wanting" you and my "losing you"....which led mo to this light of conclusion. I know now what matters most to me....It's the gift of frienship you've been giving me since day1.And I appreciate you now more than ever. :flowers:

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Let go of Fear.

 

Masturbate and you'll go blind,

Look for snakes and you will find,

The scribbled hyroglyphs,

The truth we find in myths.

 

Crack a mirror and count to seven,

Hail Mary then go to heavan,

Count the ravens on the line,

Whisper through the grape vine.

 

Treat every word as being true,

Let the superstitions through,

You'll spend all day looking back,

Searching for pavement cracks.

 

Or put your feet up on the table,

Drink soup straight from the ladle,

Do everything that you're dared,

Because lifes too short to be scared.

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p#tang %na mo charlie

 

It just strikes me, reading this latest company newsheet, if I ever accept this assignment, and if I ever ever come across you again, charlie D, putang-ina mo, you short, thin, dark, taglish spouting, dog-descended whelp from some promiscuous, diseased, over-aged, loose-pussied monkey-mating retarded pokpok, I'll get you a Western Mindanao re-assignment immediately; I would only have to wish it; such is the free hand of these private corporations. I do not care that your wife is bravely battling cancer and chemo, or that your only kid has ADD, as per this latest newsheet. Twelve years ago, when I was a young and skinny new grad engineer and you were a pandak of an HR lordling, you suspended me without pay, publicly, for talking back.

 

I was made an example eh?

 

It is only because I was too busy working, scheming, leading, getting promoted, and in my (very) limited spare moments, too distracted with all those truly incredibly heartbreakingly delicious ladies dropping from heaven all the time, that I did not get back at you. p#tang %na mo, you s@%t-skinned Indio from some third rate school, you had better start pissing your pants praying hard for good juju that I do not accept this assignment. If I did, and you so much as dared lock eyes with me as I stalk the upper corridors, p#tang %na mong negritong kulot ka, you will be in Zamboanga the very next month. I will make such excellent example of one so ill-mannered and bitch-bred, who knows not his place, nor his betters.

 

And you would know it was me.

 

If I happen to bump into you in my brief trip to Makati next week, I'll remember give you a snot-warm middle finger greeting, hopefully while trapped together all the way up in the company elevators, people crowding around us. I am 4 inches taller, 30 muscular pounds heavier, and (nowadays) 2 full levels higher than you, let me see you try to suspend me now, you dead ended middling manager, gago,

 

Fifty or a hundred years ago I would have simply shot you on the head on the spot, you socially illiterate mongrel. I am in fact wondering how your filthy unwashed ancestors had survived long enough to spawn you; we should have eliminated their ugly mugs from this beautiful land long ago, and so saved me the bother of dealing with your ungainly existence today. Pag ako ikaw, p#tang %na mong pango ka, mag-retiro ka na ngayon taon. Bago pa lalong uminit ulo ko sa pagka pangit pangit mong mukha, gago.

 

LC

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do not touch me

in those cold, empty places

where distress has replaced love's caress

do not breathe on my heart

and will it back to life

do not coax a smile from the depth of abandonment

do not give me back my dreams

my naive innocence

my boundless hope

do not teach me again

how to sing a love song

without crying over that which never was

 

just do not.

 

i will not be able to resist you.

 

-L-

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Funny no? I thought our little adventure together was a mind-blowing, awesome, uplifting, emphatic, once-in-a-lifetime thing. I felt it in my bones. It was probably something else for you, a diversion, a loose end, while waiting for the next milestone in your life. I thought you shared with me something intimate, things about you that only your closest friends and lovers would be privy to. But I was just fooling myself. What was it? Was it that clumsy thing I managed to pull off before we parted? Or is there something about me that you cannot take meaningfully? I'm just curious, that's all. It's really OK, because for the few hours we were together I was living the dream. I was with you, you were with me, and we both paid no attention to the idiot box. At least that's what it was like for me. I will always remember that moment. Even when I mean nothing to you at all, I will still remember and smile. I know that I can never be a part of your life, but in that instance, I was. You will really be busy the next few days and I understand if you have no time to reply to my text, PM or YM. Pasensiyahan mo na ako if I try to. I don't expect you to answer anyway so it's all kewl. Be careful my friend, I hope you take better care of yourself. I'll still be here if you come back. Just give me some time to pick up the pieces of my life. You ARE special to me. Take care.

 

the person meant for you, is the person who will love you even when there's no more reason to love you.. for in your nothingness, the one meant for you will find what's lovable in you..

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J,

 

I cannot compete with her. Not with her:

 

Long, rebonded locks.

 

Smooth, papaya-whitened skin.

 

Billiard maneuvers.

 

Penchant for noontime variety shows.

 

Racy pics taken in her bathroom, square white tiles and fluorescent lighting in the background.

 

Eloquence in the vernacular.

 

 

No, I cannot compete with her. I can only laugh.

 

I feel like a winner. For some reason the men who've pursued me, and are pursuing me, were, and are my intellectual equals.

 

Cat

Edited by bluegreen717
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18 Aug

I want to run down to Manila North Harbour very late this Friday night, jump into one of our semi-trailer 18-wheeler International cargo trucks, unhook the cargo trailer tail, send up them hottie young hookers to take gentle care of my faithful driver, then I will slam hard the big red start button with the flat of my right palm, and feel through my backside all 12 massive cylinders and 22 liters (yes, ten times a car's displacement) of the MAN diesel machine firing up with a rough rough throb, a throb that dips deeper as I touch the throttle and rev her up to clear the night's crud from the throats of the wailing KKK twin turbochargers. I want to grab the long thick gearshift, select one of the 10 forward gears in the two-split Torsen transmission, grind in that gear with a firm muscled forearm and meaty fist, ease the Dino-Soar servo clutch out, and run the truck (minus the long cargo trailer) through the backroads of Tondo, the piercing scream of the unmuffled exhaust throbbing the windows and doors of the tight packed houses as we rumble by, Jacobsen brakes swishing air, exhaust streaming way back, routing out through Roxas, and left to Edsa, and straight on to Balintawak, then right to North Diversion.

 

I want put those tonnes of steel machinery through her paces at the NLEX, headed deep north, to sanctuary, to sanctuary. Capable of pulling 40,000 kilograms, or 40 cars pickups, now she pulls but her owner's 78 tense tight and brutally berserk kilograms, and with such ridiculous ease she overtakes car after car, bullies bus after bus, weaves through jam after jam, using the shoulders the same as the road, long contrail of dust rising behind as I wrestle the heavy steering around precision shoulder swerves, gears the size of car tires slotting up and down in unconscious double-declutching tranny harmony. Exiting at Santa Rita, we charge alone through the cake flat plains of Central Luzon in the dead of night, engine, turbos, tinny stereo, and at times myself at full cry, just like college summers past, but now my years of experience are added to that old raw hungry energy of youth, and twice deadly we pass the night fearless and heedless and free.

 

At dawn the ramparts of the Caraballo mountains rise up at the horizon, the gates to North Luzon. Pacing around my ticking rumbling truck, inspecting, whilst I sip my hot cheap carinderia Nescaffe, the cold clear morning mountain air wakes me up and washes away the night's fatigue. Jumping up back on the driver's seat, the truck and myself charge up the foothills of Dalton Pass for what must be the near 200th time, 90+ memorised kilometers of steeply inclined twisty trucky driving, cliff to one side, mountain at the other, inches of clearance in between, 180 to 270 degree completely blind curves at random intervals, landslides if you are lucky, sudden death if you are not - rusty broken carcasses of past crashes littering the way, a new one with my every trip. Eating up the wrong side of the road time and again, following the racing line with a massive truck forced to dance car-like; though barely tameable, all her ten tires squealing, the charge continues, straight up cloud wrapped Dalton Pass, thousands of feet in the sky, the oil and water temperatures ratcheting on the VDO gauges as the machine is pushed most unmerciful, engine revs touching red, machinery suffering as much as the driver, the exhaust manifolds abake with dull heat, that burnt candle stink of overhot steel, the diesel exhaust a light boiling blue and gray plume, overtaking everything, everyone, everybody

 

Call it passion, call it adrenalin, call it energy, call it lust, call it ambition, but they will not leave me be, they will not give me peace. I may, at last, sicken and stumble, and rest, but always always always I will come back, wounded perhaps, but unheeding, unheeding, demons flooring every last one of my various throttles, I cannot say no, I cannot stop, it is not me that wishes this so - I charge north to sanctuary, but it has been years since I found her last,

 

and now she is gone.

 

do you understand? I fight (and f#&k, and love, and fight again) like a race machine, and know no other way. You may even pierce my defenses, (and I may pierce yours, accidentally, and never never with malice aforethought), but it really changes naught; I am battleship compartmentalised, literally unable to simply sink down and thereby put an end to my many hits, holes, and hurts; I must suffer each and every one instead. I take you as you are, so then take me as I am, or not at all. You may want what I can not give, yet still I give you all what my demons may allow me to keep as my own, and these are not little. Here, with all masks removed, you see me, immersed in power and flames, and writhing, but unbroken; steel and smoke and fire.

 

And you, you've got the look.

 

do you understand?

 

No matter what I may do or not do, we are already doomed by a century of blood karma and wholesale political misdeeds gone fatal, and still unchecked, still unconfessedn, till even today. Our very existence remains so far unjustified, and our mere names considered criminal. Hell already awaits us all, why do I even bother to get up and go to church and perform my work and duties? But I only seek the Truth, as always; I am addicted to Darkness, but no demon, I am enslaved to Light, but no angel; giving hope to others, but keeping none for my own.

 

The usual rules do not apply to me,

 

do you understand?

 

At the peak of Dalton Pass, with a loud crankshaft shuddering cough I engage the engine brakes, and head down, engine temperatures swiftly ratcheting back to blue, the machine normalising. For here at North Luzon, sanctuary is nearer. The green empty unpeopled plains beckon, we should go there, where lie the wild white unnamed beaches and completely blue waters and crashing Pacific Ocean waves on rocky cliffs, those cumulus white clouds, envelop me, envelop all. Join me, a few days, a few days, some hours, a fraction of this finite existence, at Sagada, Baguio, Banaue, Baler, Bontoc, Casiguran, Aparri, Conner, Apayao, Palanan, and beyond.

 

The misty mountains beckon, hundred million years of mystery underfoot, eternal monuments unmistakeably God's. We really have not much time to dwell on jealousy, nor on selfishness. We really only have here and now and today; that short lag between the lightning flash of Genesis and the thunderclap of Armageddon.

 

I want you there, I want my head in your lap, I want your fingers closing my harsh light brown eyes and mussing my black brown hair, I want my heart and my thoughts to be still, I want sanctuary, even temporary, and I want you be heedless and fearless and free, free, here at the seat of power, you will fear no one, fear nothing, not my kills and counterkills, not the coming nights, not the loneliness, not even yourself, not even fate, not even the end. And I shall take naught away from you,

 

for you, I would only add, for you, I would wrap such powerful arms,

 

do you understand?

 

A. Paz-Benitez III

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***,

 

the time has come when friendship has to take the backseat.

 

the board meeting yesterday didn't turn out good for your unit. again.

 

you've been losing and losing tremendously.

 

there is no art in running our business, just guts, lots of it.

 

you are brilliant. you are the one person who knows everything about the philippine and singapore operations. no one else but you, can claim authority over them. but...

 

i hate my job as it tasks me to tell you you're losing yours. i know, it is not all your fault that the unit is going to the dogs. but the blame had stopped after you've been in the post for 10 months. that unit is 10 years old. it has been the flagship business 3.5 years ago. but now, it has gone from bad to worse. not because of you entirely. but because you failed to be firm and ruthless. i go to E- and i see the employees walking zombies, laughing clowns. don't they know they could lose their jobs for that?

 

i am getting a man to replace you. i think it is about time i trust a member of the opposite sex to run that business. even if it means that now all my managers are men. damn! there used to be just us women running the show which should be headed by men. now, i am forced to hire them dicks again.

 

starting september 1, you will no longer be the GM of E.

 

no apologies.

 

---

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I wanted a simple life.

I wanted to stay at home

but I didn't want my brains to lie idle

so I allowed it to roam.

Now I understand why Gandalf & Sam

Refused to wear the ring of power

even if there was the opportunity

to do not just a little

but a lot of good.

So once more I resist

the temptation to have & to be

for what most mortals aspire, dream

& eventually lie, cheat & steal

in order to survive,

to mitigate a greater evil

to sacrifice my soul so other souls may keep clean

as well as other false excuses

that spare a person's accountability

for the evil he does to himself & to others.

 

"...prosiguió su camino, sin llevar otro que aquel que su caballo quería, creyendo que en aquello consistía la fuerza de las aventuras".

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