I have an entire day before I begin to work on what I like to call the “Book Project from Hell.” In my years of working for this publishing firm, I think I’ve only encountered one such other project, which shall remain unnamed, of course. So, with this current project, my “hellish project(s)” score is now up to TWO. Not bad you might say, but then again you have not survived going through page after page of seemingly endless, badly written prose—grammatically incorrect, unclear and wordy, with direct quotes galore—or months of consultations with authors who can’t seem to make up their minds as far as the content of their manuscripts is concerned (like what happened with Book Project from Hell No. 1, where editing stretched from three to four months because the author kept changing his/her [well, this is a blind item, after all] mind that I almost self-induced a coma). My first experience was enough to scare me away from taking on similar projects, but what can one do when one is a sucker? P asked why I won’t start writing again, at least, I would be responsible only on making me look and sound good and not making other people sound, well, less stupid, but I will have to see if I can still churn out writing that is publishable.

Well, I have an entire day to do as I please: blog, watch DVDs, organize my computer, clean the ref (Ugh! The peril of adulthood!), cook sinigang na beef, or play Wii. I say, thank God for small reprieves.

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Speaking of perfect time wasters, I think it’s time I stop watching the Michael Jackson coverage on various TV channels. God, I’m hypnotized. I can’t seem to get enough details of his death, of his life, of his music, and his videos. I can’t say that I’m a diehard fan, but I do love some of his works. I was born in the mid-’70s and I think that the people of my generation–we feel more strongly that Michael belonged to us. I loved his Jackson 5 albums, I loved how he looked as a young, black man–before all the surgeries–that in recent years it has become painful for me to even look at him when on TV or in magazines. It depresses me to dwell on the fact that he’s really gone forever, but then his music lives on.

Here’s one of my favorite MJ music videos (“You Rock My World”) from his album Invincible (gosh, his crotch grabbing and gyrating here is just the best ever!):