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Word has reached me that I completely punked out after breaking up with my ex sometime last year. I guess I got so used to him keeping me from having my own friends and forbidding me to live my own life that my world completely shattered when I finally dumped his possessive ass. But since I didn’t really have any friends when I walked away from my two year prison sentence relationship, I turned to the cool kids and tried my damned hardest to fit into the scene. Hence the piercings, the dyed bangs, the weird haircut, && the band.

Didant you know? The way I am now is me coping with an empty, sorry life without my ex.

Just can’t function no more

I thought I’d celebrate Blog Action Day by giving the world a little more than an environmental message. This entry is a guide on how to achieve the uber-hip scenester look should you ever find yourself in my situation. If you can’t snort coke && party with the cool kids, you can at least look like you do because you’re s0o0o0 heartbroken.

Get busy living or get busy dying

Recycling is a hardcore thing that everyone, scenester-wannabes or not, can do to help save the environment. Reusing old things prevents wasting useful materials, cuts down on the consumption of our dwindling raw materials, && reduces energy usage. I personally do my share of recycling by shopping at thrift stores, or as we call it in the Philippines, ukay-ukay. Not only do I get to save these awesome finds && give them a better home in my overstuffed closet. I get to assert the fact that I am indie && non-conformist by refusing to buy clothes where normal people get their stuff.

Don’t you know who I think I am?

You’d be amazed at all the chic, glamorous finds you can grab from your neighborhood ukay-ukay. Ukay-ukay stores are usually located on nondescript streets and dingy old buildings. They may look dusty && dirty on the outside, but believe me they are treasure troves of hoodies, leather boots, calf-high sneakers, baggy tops, skinny jeans, && black dresses. My favorite haunts are the ones in Cubao && across the street from Robinson’s Galleria Ortigas. But unless you’re a good friend, I’m not about to reveal their exact location because I don’t want everybody to start shopping there && become as cool as me. Sry gais.

The key to putting together a genuine scenester outfit is to dress like you don’t give a shit about what people will think of your fashion sense (or lack thereof). Throw together pieces with loud patterns && behave like anyone who isn’t wearing mismatched clothing is a disgrace to the fashion gods (see above). Wear tops at least two sizes too big for you so that it looks like you’re wearing a sack. It will also help if you cover your mane with hair wax so you achieve the look of a teenage junkie who hasn’t seen a shower in days. Trust me, resembling a hobo will give you that “I’m cooler than you k?” vibe. Only those who are born with style have enough confidence to go against the grain && look like a calculated mess.

A beautiful girl can make you dizzy

See what I did there? Animal-print clothes are so 80’s && this country doesn’t have the right climate for boots - but that’s precisely why I chose to put that outfit together. I’m making a statement here by refusing to wear what everyone else is wearing. Believe it or not, that whole outfit cost me less than a thousand bucks!

Boots - I can’t remember how much I got them for because I’ve owned this pair since high school. I’m guessing it only cost me around 400, 500 pesos.
Shorts - 100 pesos
Black tank top - 50 pesos
Leopard-print hoodie - 100 pesos
Shades - 50 pesos
Looking totally rad && unlike everybody else - priceless

Shopping at ukay-ukay stores is the only way you can reduce waste generation while simultaneously working on your hxc (hardcore) image. Nothing screams arty rebel like odd pieces of worn-out clothing strategically put together to create a look that’s part-grunge, part-luxxe, part-heroin chic. Make sure you ask your friends to take tons of pictures of yourself thrashing around at a party with a bottle of beer on one hand a lit cigarette on the other. So when your ex finally sees you looking oh so hot && oh so scene on the intarwebz, his messiah complex will kick in && he’ll try to find a way to save you before you spiral out of control. Then you can have the pleasure of walking away from him a second time!

thx 4 tha mmrs

I got invited to this beach trip two weekends from now by friends who party like Cory Kennedy and I’m damn excited since it’s been months since I last went out of town. At the same time I’m worried about being the fattest girl in the group by default because I eat real food for breakfast instead of taking a cocktail of pills, and spend my evenings sleeping instead of partying hardcore. This upcoming beach trip, compounded with the pressure to be cool and my plunging self-esteem, made me decide to become skinny like a scenester in two weeks. Unfortunately for me, I discovered over the weekend that I’m not cool enough to do drugs.

During the party I held at my house on Saturday, my friend Sammi and I had a conversation about mixing marijuana and booze. Since girls with pink mohawks make me want to impress them with my drug knowledge, I proudly proclaimed that you’re supposed to do pot after drinking. Apparently, it’s the other way around. Sammi laughed at me while I hung my head in shame, and we came to the conclusion that I’m not cool enough to do drugs. As if to rub salt into my wounded ego, Sammi made me install the nickname application on my Facebook page, where she gave me the nickname Lauren “Not Cool Enough” Dado. Yeah.

See her? What a fat fat fattie.

I’m so fixated on dropping ten pounds that instead of working, I’ve been spending the entire morning thinking of ways to be cokehead skinny without actually developing a coke habit. Here are the ideas that I’ve come up with so far:

Ditch your skinny friends. Hanging out with a bunch of fatties makes you the skinniest person in the group by default. Unfortunately I don’t have this option for the beach trip, so I’ll have to resort to other methods.

Go to the gym. Ideally I should be working out around three times a week, but I’m usually too tired after work to hit the gym. Well, that’s going to change now! I solemnly swear to go to the gym after work maybe four times a week until the beach, no matter how fucking exhausted I am.

Starvation. This idea was so obvious, it took me a while to realize this. During my morning cigarette break, my coworker was telling me about how he dropped 75 pounds in college by eating nothing but soup. I have no idea how much I weigh right now but my estimate is that I must be about a hundred pounds. If I follow my coworker’s strict diet regimen, I’ll weigh 25 pounds by the time I hit the beach. I think that’s just about right.

What works for Jeffree Star will work for me too!

Throw up after every meal. I hear that this is supposed to be some eating disorder called “bulimia” but if it works for models, it might just work for me too! Then again, I can’t force myself to vomit to save my life. The idea of sticking a finger down my throat is revolting, plus it’s a waste of perfectly good food. Let’s cross this item off the list and move on to the next one.

Wear loose clothing. Really loose tops automatically make me look ten pounds skinnier than I really am, but again I don’t have this option for the beach. Unless I do a fashion faux pas and go swimming in the ocean wearing a big t-shirt instead of a bikini. Which is not exactly an option since I’m going to be with very hip people, and I’m already uncool enough as it is.

If you can’t be cokehead skinny, you could just look like a cokehead, period. All you need is smeared red lipstick, lots of black liquid eyeliner, and mad Photoshop skillz. Perfect.

Pseudo-cokehead much?

It’s that time of the month again, and I don’t mean my period. Depression, as I experience it, works like karma. For a month or two I’m happy, calm, stable, fun, and confident that I can take on all the curveballs life throws at me. Then the depression gets triggered by a minor disappointment, or something as arbitrary as the way shadows fall on a building. For about three to four weeks I move around in a zombie-like state punctuated by the occasional crying jag. Then, just as suddenly as the depression started, I bounce back into my “normal”, relatively happy self. Rise, wash, repeat.

At the moment I’m going through one of those downs and it’s gotten so bad that I actually cried in public no less than three times this week. My friends say they’ve seen me in worse shape before, so I guess there’s no reason for me to panic. It’s just one of those things I have to go through. Of course, it doesn’t make the present any less awful for me.

I noticed something interesting about this particular down though: my musical taste expanded to accommodate classic rock and folk music. Well okay, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the most depressing songs (in my opinion) fall under those genres. If you listen to most the sad songs made over the last five years, they’re usually about getting screwed over by love. Nobody sings about getting screwed over by life anymore. I don’t want to hear songs about getting dumped because I don’t have a broken heart; I have a broken soul. Or at least, that’s what it feels like. I wish I had a broken heart because at least I can point out where the problem lies. But I don’t even have the luxury of blaming some stupid boy for this horrible, inexplicable sadness I’m going through at the moment.

Because writing about depression is getting old, I figured I’d share what I think are the five most depressing songs I know. I’ve arranged them in ascending order, from the song that make me think about difficult but not entirely unpleasant things, to the song that I would most likely play whilst committing suicide, if I were actually suicidal. Which I am not.

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