with his losses in basel (his hometown) and paris (bad record there, but still), i sort of expected they (those awful awful guys who couldn't recognize genius even if it kicked them right in the balls) would start picking on roger again.

but it's 2009, almost a decade since i first saw that kid with the goofy face; it's established among my (small) circle that fascination is not just fascination. what's worse than obsession? must be a disease right. yeah, got it.

things have changed. roger doesn't win them all anymore. i, on the other hand, am freaking out on what used to be really simple things before.

like on thursday my throat hurt like hell and i knew it would lead to one of those terrible colds, and it did, and until now i can't breath properly, and i'm sure my mom would lecture me hard on the importance of blowing my nose, but the phonecalls are less frequent now, and when we talk we try to inform each other of how our days or weeks went, what's new with her, who i'd vote for in the next elections, whatever.

freaky, colds. where fever used to be fun before, i mean, except for the inconvenience, who doesn't want an excuse to be out of school, any discomfort now causes anxiety and panic.

what if i've this really serious disease and this is just a symptom and i don't really want to die young you know. i've never been to tibet!

roger has become like this sage. sure, he talked sense before but now, he's right there with zen poets, except he wears prada and has tons of trophies and twin daughters and a wife with awesome skin.

read this interview. he says "i feel like i'm the 'love winning' rather than the 'hate losing' type." i felt better, then bad again; i miss 2004, and 2006, and 2007.

the inspiration for my undergraduate thesis was repeated readings of edward said's power, politics, and culture, a book which i bought for i think less than a hundred pesos at bound, and because i heard my philippine institutions (aka rizal) professor mention once that this edward said guy wrote about asians or something.

the book is a collection of interviews; it led me to orientalism and culture and imperialism. i began using the word postcolonialism like i knew shit about it.

said's influences include jacques derrida and michel foucault. i read parts of the will to knowledge in some class; it was required reading. then this one holy week i was bored and there were no more dvds left to watch, so i read the entire thing.

halfway through the use of pleasure, i stopped, and turned to marcuse. i needed an excuse to despise work, marcuse provided it.

i still read derrida, and his translator, gayatri spivak. sometimes i youtube this spivak lecture called the subaltern and the popular. maybe it had a different title, but that was what she was talking about.

one day, i once told myself, i'd be derrida, i'd start this new movement which would shatter human knowledge and blow my readers' minds away. i'd be heidegger and invent continental philosophy, but not continental philosophy because he already did that.

the painful truth is this: last night, i realized, i babytalk.

"just got five words to say yeah yeah yeah you just gotta stay high." i miss new radicals.

surgery went well, i think. lost three perfectly healthy teeth today. three. this is real life. they say losing teeth in your dreams means something bad happens to someone you know. i'd take the teeth dream please. hope it's one of those extended family members who think they're so much better than you, ugly skin and all.

but it's done. you can't choose your dreams right. so it's ice cream for me until the entire mouth heals. hope that's tomorrow. oh, ice cream and antibiotics. and where the frak are those pain relievers.

and we have a new tennis world number two. andy murray becomes the first player other rafael nadal or roger federer to be ranked second since 2005. i'd love to be a murray fan but i'm not sure i could give him everything i have. i did crazy things for roger and i would still.

he, roger, remains in the top spot (in the rankings and in my heart, see, told you, crazy things); rafa is pushed down to third. again, never a fan, but he's way better than everybody else. i've already accepted that. we need to see him play.

we're living in interesting times. meanwhile, it's time i learned french.

can't believe i'm still sick. more than a week now. no doctors. i already figured anyway, by myself and through a little web research, that this is swine flu, maybe something worse. plus, i'm saving.