0161: "Sometimes love has to take a backseat to everything else, you know."
You know you need a break from life in general when you wake up in the morning, take a bath, and suddenly realize that you're about to put deodorant on your toothpaste.
Not like I can take one anytime soon, though.
***
Would you believe that I started this entry last week?
I’m following in the footsteps of my blog mentor Jman; I’m typing entries in Word and posting them days later now. Every time I try to type an entry from scratch on the LJ update page I end up falling asleep or having to do something else (and thus the few paragraphs I type end up wasted or eaten by expired cookies).
Sometimes I wonder though, if my posts have any purpose in this world other than being my way of keeping in touch with other people and being one of my few (and the list keeps getting shorter and shorter) remaining methods of detox.
I wish I could update more, though. My entries on Microsoft Word tend to be a lot longer since I rarely update now.
By the way, I’m not forcing you to read my entries if you deem them too long. Don’t read if you don’t want to; it’s not like I test you on them or anything (not like I have time to make up a test on my blog either, donk). Don't misunderstand me - I'm not mad at anyone; I just don't want to cut my entries.
Cutting my entries would defeat one of the main reason I keep this blog.
***
Congratulations to Kim and Miggy for winning the Qwizardy (sp?) contest!
And a note to all of us: Starbucks was not founded by Mr. Star or Mr. Bucks. Just like the Johari window was not conceptualized by Mr. Johari.
***
Sometimes I preempt myself.
During the Qwizardy (sp?) contest:
Question: What is the second largest lake in Southeast Asia?
Us in audience: *murmuring*
Self: Di naman Lake ang Laguna de Bay diba?
Someone: Bay nga ata siya.
*time runs out*
Announcer: The correct answer is… Laguna de Bay!
Us: *donk*
***
Ne, do you remember why we first talked to each other?
Strangely enough, it was because of our friend’s homeroom teacher who had mentioned Lord of the Rings.
Do you remember the days we spent writing and talking and watching anime?
I do, I still remember them quite well.
Do you remember the day we cut class because we saw a hamster at the front lobby?
I do.
The first person to read my most infamous work was you, and honestly I wouldn’t have submitted it to the school paper without your positive input. So technically you helped give me notoriety? Lol.
You're one of the few people who understand my deep sadness after reading Harry Potter Book 6 - and no, it's not because a certain character died. I learned how to write really small from watching you and Francine-chan, and thus my classmates in Intarmed laugh at me when they see me use up only 1/4 of a piece of pad paper as compared to them who use the whole page (or at least 1/2 of it) for homework.
My writing critic, my friend, my confidant, a fellow Year of the Dragon person…
Happy (belated) birthday, Tessa-chan :) And now starts the short period of time wherein we are the same age, as we always note when your birthday comes around.
PS: You do know I'm still envious of you since you share the same campus as him. :| Not to mention you have that Book Sale place!!! :(
***
[I’m really sorry this is late, Vinni-san; writing (rather, attempting to write) about hydrates and oxy-red reactions used up all my words.]
To the guy who I used to mix up with Jar-san in first year, never minding how different you two look - the glasses confused me. I didn’t know you at all, but my friend in your section talked about you sometimes.
To the guy who I heard a lot about in second year from my roommate who was your classmate.
To my friend in third year who was a sage (wait, maybe Monch was the sage) and a demon warrior, the guy who got an uno in the subject I failed for two quarters, a lord/god in a colorful blanket with turtles, the Japanese man who I was married to for two seconds before you beheaded me (lol) in English class. I used to pair you up with Jman, hee (much to his chagrin). :) I remember your winning the Math intersection (I think) by a very large margin.
To my friend in fourth year, whose birthday fell on the Chinese New Year and thus I gave tikoy to you, though he got it at least a day after. My friend who was a Star Scholar candidate, a Director’s List awardee, an Oblation Scholar, and even the recipient of the ASEAN scholarship. I won’t forget the Potassium outings, nor you graduating with high honors and winning the Math and Physics awards. Nor will I forget your bronze medal.
To my friend who wins my contests, the guy now studying in Singapore, my friend who understands me when I talk about Pokemon, and the guy who almost gave me a heart attack when he sat in my NSTP class last December.
My favorite superhero (aside from Spiderman?), one of the smartest people I know, a friend who reads my lj even if he’s busy so many miles away, and the person traumatized by watching an open-heart surgery in third year…
Happy (belated) birthday, Vinni-san! I hope it was a great day for you :)
***
The room is dark and my dark hair blends into the shadows, glimmering only when a camera flashes and the television screen lights up. I pick up the microphone and sing, and maybe the buzzing in my head will stop.
Drink, my cousins tell me. It's free, they say, it comes with the room.
I shake my head and they take it away, dividing it up for themselves.
I don't want to get drunk tonight, I tell them.
Just one sip, they cajole, you're not a lightweight that gets drunk with one sip.
I smile innocently, making them think again that I'm less than my age, that I'm just that little girl who always carried a Mickey Mouse doll around their house once again until its head got burned in their backyard. They then pick up the remote and choose the next song to sing to, and I drop the smile and turn away. It's not like I can see the lyrics on the television screen clearly because the colors of the music and the different voices dance in front of my eyelids, but as long as I sing in the microphone no one will be the wiser.
I take another sip of my Coke, noticing that a bottle of beer is placed strategically near it. It's not right.
I'm not scared of getting drunk. I'm not scared of having anything happen to me while I'm drunk. I'm not scared of getting a hangover the morning after, having my head pound repeatedly while cramming my written school requirements.
I just don't want to be able to use the "I'm drunk" excuse when I post things that may be raw and cruel and hurtful. I don't want you to read this and think "Oh, Lorraine's drunk, that's why she wrote that cruel letter-post to me on her blog."
I don't want that excuse. I don’t need it.
I want you to be hurt. I want you to be hurt by words written when I'm sober, so you'll know that I wrote it with complete rationality of thought and no added courage flowing through my veins.
And I feel, if I got drunk, I'd think once again about all the reasons I should forgive you (admittedly very few, but there are still some) and maybe I'll be insane and really do.
I've muddled through our friendship long enough using only feelings and kindness as my supposed tour guide. If anything good has come out of our farce of a friendship, it's that I've learned that rationality is important in a friendship also.
And rationality tells me this: it's stupid to want to be a friend of someone who'll just kick you around again once your defenses are down.
My cousin hands me the microphone again, and I shake away these thoughts and squint at the screen again. Yet these thoughts stay in the back of my mind, and they'll surely come back clearly to me when I rub the sleep from my eyes come the morning.
And the Coke and the beer stay untouched side by side, blending into the table and into the shadows until they disappear from my sight.
***
Sometimes love has to take a backseat to everything else, you know.
That time is now, but it won’t be for evermore.
Although it is nice to think that my last cry was induced not by angst but by prolonged aerial exposure to formalin.
But I can’t keep on running away forever, and I’m just waiting for the time when my path runs out and I slam into a brick wall.
***
And you try again, and I am reminded why I hate instant messengers. Honestly, the first time I use it in a long time (for schoolwork, no less) and you put me off it again with your deceiving messages sent at the wrong time and the wrong place. Then again, every time is the wrong time and everywhere we’re not face-to-face is the wrong place.
Am I cruel for not replying? I guess I am. Propriety demands that I at least reply to your message, no matter how distasteful, without feeling, and how fake it is. Then I remember what happened the last time (and please make it the last time) I followed propriety and I think I made the right decision.
Your words, I’ve heard them before. Tell me something new this time, or at least change the words. I’m sure you’re competent enough to check an online thesaurus.
I repeat, I repeat, and I repeat myself again: I’m not that kind. I’m not that naïve. I’m not that trusting anymore. If you’re going to try at all, put some more effort in it at least. And I'm not about to jeopardize my chance at contentment just to give you 'peace of mind.'
***
Okay. In light of it being Martin Luther King Day two weeks ago, I found out that Mr. King was murdered in Lorraine Hotel. (Thankfully it has been demolished.)
My birthname becomes more and more auspicious. *rolls eyes*
***
Around a year ago, Judith-san posted on her blog about FutureMe.org.
My email from a year ago just arrived, and it’s very odd to read something addressed to the present you from the you a year back.
I laugh at what I wrote in that email to myself, but maybe I envy my relative optimism and innocence reflected in that email. I realize how cynical I’ve become ever since so many events after January 2006 passed, how mistrustful, how sad I am now.
It’s interesting to look back. But I don’t think I want to go back to those days (because we all know what comes up in February 2006). I want to go to before that, or just stay here in the present, or just skip to the future.
At that point in my life, I was realizing that what I thought was my future was nothing but a carefully spun fairytale-like wish that would fall down around me once I started living it. And I couldn’t do anything about it, I thought back then, because the forms had been signed and the results have been coming out.
And by a series of unexpected events (some sad, some happy, some infuriating) I end up here a year later, enrolled in a course I thought I never could qualify for, having friends I never knew I'd meet, learning about frog muscles and man not having instincts and even the special hybridization notation technique.
I’ve lost the point of this rumination; nevertheless, I am still trying to be happy now.
That’s one thing that hasn’t changed about me in a year. Of course, years may pass before I actually achieve it, if I even ever do.
***
Poison makes me sleepy.
I stay in the back, though, so I can sleep to my heart’s content. (Unless there’s a test, of course.) Sleep or write in my planner or even do the Math module. >_<
Of course, poison sometimes weakens with time. Other times, it gets stronger, somehow evolves into a more destructive and virulent form of itself, because it was left to survive how many years.
In our case… it’s probably the latter.
***
[Part 1 of a two-part series, the second part to be posted when I finish typing it up.]
I think when we of Block 13 of Intarmed 2013 die, we will spend millions of years in Purgatory doing penance for many counts of school-sanctioned murder (otherwise known as frog dissection).
While we were relatively kind to our frogs at first (relatively kind being that we paralyzed our frogs before skinning and cutting and dissecting them), we quickly became crueler and started taking parts of frogs while the frog was still very much alive and not paralyzed.
Imagine a perfectly healthy frog, valiantly trying to hop away into the wilderness that is UP Manila, being held down by three or four girls with a male skinning its hind leg. Imagine how it keeps trying to jerk away its skinned leg (and not skinned leg) from the hands of those people holding them, or how it keeps its eyes open even if its head is covered by latex-protected hands. Imagine its alarm as we separate a muscle from his leg, cutting it until we reach its long Achilles tendon and eventually separate it completely from its body. Imagine the red blood, dark red blood that flows when my classmate cuts a blood vessel by accident, making our laboratory table look like a crime scene.
Maybe it is, because we didn’t use chloroform on the frog beforehand like the other block did, nor did we destroy part of its nervous system before we made the preliminary incisions. But I swear it just went missing when it was time for it; we found it after we had skinned a lower limb already.
It didn’t work anyway, because we made it smell the chloroform and it refused to die.
We had all been wondering about the frog’s tongue, because when we opened the mouths of our preserved frogs the tongues had turned gray and tough and were… odd. We took a look at the tongue of our frog and were intrigued - the tongue is pink and is stuck at the tip of the mouth inside nearest the lip area (as opposed to our tongues which are stuck to the backs of our mouths). We wondered why it was positioned so oddly, but I reckon it was placed there so that the frog could aim higher/more long-range (because if the tongue’s base was at the middle of the mouth inside, it would reach nearer distances only).
When we finished our experiment on the kinds of muscle twitches (finished being that we gave up on the very old apparatus working in sync with the frog muscle and our teacher just drew the different graphs on the blackboard), we all watched my friend continue the dissection of the poor poor frog. He skinned the frog with a relatively practiced hand (this was probably his second/third time), investigating every inch of the poor frog’s body. (He actually got the dorsal skin off in one piece - hee, one could sew it up and make a wallet considering its size) At this point, we thought the frog was dead because my friend had taken off all the skin of the frog, scraped off some of its fat (I repeat, frog fat is icky - it’s like yellow pompoms yet with the consistency near the mango's), studied most of the muscles (and cut some, even), and finally ripped the frog’s head off because he wanted to do brain extraction.
It’s creepy to hold the head of a frog in your hand. Looking at it, you’ll have the head (with eyes, mouth, the skin of the head, etc.) and attached to it would be the frog’s vertebral column. It’s sort of like a fish with only the bones left, although without the tail. Anyway, he embarked on the harrowing journey and we watched him with morbid fascination. It took a long time, so he rested for a while. At this point, some people decided to ask our teacher about the frog heart and what it looked like. Our teacher then poked around the frog’s chest, looking for it and suddenly we all noticed that the chest was faintly moving up and down.
So even after everything, the frog was still alive. At least its heart was. Our teacher tried to find the heart (scattering the other chest muscles and blood on the dissecting pan) but it stayed hidden. We all wondered at the tenacity of our frog (or at least its heart) that it still beat after we violated it at least one hour ago.
Eventually, my friend continued with his search for the elusive frog brain with us all watching interestedly. (As of this time, we had been disintegrating all the brains of the frogs we had, so we had not actually seen a completely intact frog brain). He opened the frog’s mouth again (which was easier to open compared to the mouths of our preserved frogs) and worked from there.
A frog brain is white. It’s sort of like a cotton bud, only with lobes and some blue veins running through it. (Now that I think about it, the frog brain sort of looks like white cheese.) It’s quite small; I’ve seen earrings larger than it. :) (Especially those dangling earrings Moncie-san would wear sometimes in Pisay, hee.)
But that was the penultimate fascinating thing for that day. Our teacher then smiled at us and suggested we take out the frog’s eyes (from its head) and examine them. Our eyes all widened and my friend went to work on the eyes, yet they refused to pop out of the head. >_< I think it was our teacher who finally took pity on us (or she was impatient to see our reactions to the naked eyeballs of the frog - we’re a very reactive class, we have screams, squeals, etc.) and popped out the two eyeballs, and they fell on the white tiled laboratory table and rolled towards some of our classmates.
Holding an eye… even if it is of a less evolved species is fascinating. It was black and round and actually a little bigger than I expected it to be. They weren’t soft exactly, they were somewhat firm. My classmate held them level with her eyes and we tried to take a picture of her, but she didn’t want a picture of her with frog eyes replacing her own. >_<
You know something, though? I really wonder what kind of person we of Imed 2013 are to be fascinated by this type of school-sanctioned murder over and over again. (More insights on this in Part 2, where we do something utterly new with the frogs.)
Not like I can take one anytime soon, though.
***
Would you believe that I started this entry last week?
I’m following in the footsteps of my blog mentor Jman; I’m typing entries in Word and posting them days later now. Every time I try to type an entry from scratch on the LJ update page I end up falling asleep or having to do something else (and thus the few paragraphs I type end up wasted or eaten by expired cookies).
Sometimes I wonder though, if my posts have any purpose in this world other than being my way of keeping in touch with other people and being one of my few (and the list keeps getting shorter and shorter) remaining methods of detox.
I wish I could update more, though. My entries on Microsoft Word tend to be a lot longer since I rarely update now.
By the way, I’m not forcing you to read my entries if you deem them too long. Don’t read if you don’t want to; it’s not like I test you on them or anything (not like I have time to make up a test on my blog either, donk). Don't misunderstand me - I'm not mad at anyone; I just don't want to cut my entries.
Cutting my entries would defeat one of the main reason I keep this blog.
***
Congratulations to Kim and Miggy for winning the Qwizardy (sp?) contest!
And a note to all of us: Starbucks was not founded by Mr. Star or Mr. Bucks. Just like the Johari window was not conceptualized by Mr. Johari.
***
Sometimes I preempt myself.
During the Qwizardy (sp?) contest:
Question: What is the second largest lake in Southeast Asia?
Us in audience: *murmuring*
Self: Di naman Lake ang Laguna de Bay diba?
Someone: Bay nga ata siya.
*time runs out*
Announcer: The correct answer is… Laguna de Bay!
Us: *donk*
***
Ne, do you remember why we first talked to each other?
Strangely enough, it was because of our friend’s homeroom teacher who had mentioned Lord of the Rings.
Do you remember the days we spent writing and talking and watching anime?
I do, I still remember them quite well.
Do you remember the day we cut class because we saw a hamster at the front lobby?
I do.
The first person to read my most infamous work was you, and honestly I wouldn’t have submitted it to the school paper without your positive input. So technically you helped give me notoriety? Lol.
You're one of the few people who understand my deep sadness after reading Harry Potter Book 6 - and no, it's not because a certain character died. I learned how to write really small from watching you and Francine-chan, and thus my classmates in Intarmed laugh at me when they see me use up only 1/4 of a piece of pad paper as compared to them who use the whole page (or at least 1/2 of it) for homework.
My writing critic, my friend, my confidant, a fellow Year of the Dragon person…
Happy (belated) birthday, Tessa-chan :) And now starts the short period of time wherein we are the same age, as we always note when your birthday comes around.
PS: You do know I'm still envious of you since you share the same campus as him. :| Not to mention you have that Book Sale place!!! :(
***
[I’m really sorry this is late, Vinni-san; writing (rather, attempting to write) about hydrates and oxy-red reactions used up all my words.]
To the guy who I used to mix up with Jar-san in first year, never minding how different you two look - the glasses confused me. I didn’t know you at all, but my friend in your section talked about you sometimes.
To the guy who I heard a lot about in second year from my roommate who was your classmate.
To my friend in third year who was a sage (wait, maybe Monch was the sage) and a demon warrior, the guy who got an uno in the subject I failed for two quarters, a lord/god in a colorful blanket with turtles, the Japanese man who I was married to for two seconds before you beheaded me (lol) in English class. I used to pair you up with Jman, hee (much to his chagrin). :) I remember your winning the Math intersection (I think) by a very large margin.
To my friend in fourth year, whose birthday fell on the Chinese New Year and thus I gave tikoy to you, though he got it at least a day after. My friend who was a Star Scholar candidate, a Director’s List awardee, an Oblation Scholar, and even the recipient of the ASEAN scholarship. I won’t forget the Potassium outings, nor you graduating with high honors and winning the Math and Physics awards. Nor will I forget your bronze medal.
To my friend who wins my contests, the guy now studying in Singapore, my friend who understands me when I talk about Pokemon, and the guy who almost gave me a heart attack when he sat in my NSTP class last December.
My favorite superhero (aside from Spiderman?), one of the smartest people I know, a friend who reads my lj even if he’s busy so many miles away, and the person traumatized by watching an open-heart surgery in third year…
Happy (belated) birthday, Vinni-san! I hope it was a great day for you :)
***
The room is dark and my dark hair blends into the shadows, glimmering only when a camera flashes and the television screen lights up. I pick up the microphone and sing, and maybe the buzzing in my head will stop.
Drink, my cousins tell me. It's free, they say, it comes with the room.
I shake my head and they take it away, dividing it up for themselves.
I don't want to get drunk tonight, I tell them.
Just one sip, they cajole, you're not a lightweight that gets drunk with one sip.
I smile innocently, making them think again that I'm less than my age, that I'm just that little girl who always carried a Mickey Mouse doll around their house once again until its head got burned in their backyard. They then pick up the remote and choose the next song to sing to, and I drop the smile and turn away. It's not like I can see the lyrics on the television screen clearly because the colors of the music and the different voices dance in front of my eyelids, but as long as I sing in the microphone no one will be the wiser.
I take another sip of my Coke, noticing that a bottle of beer is placed strategically near it. It's not right.
I'm not scared of getting drunk. I'm not scared of having anything happen to me while I'm drunk. I'm not scared of getting a hangover the morning after, having my head pound repeatedly while cramming my written school requirements.
I just don't want to be able to use the "I'm drunk" excuse when I post things that may be raw and cruel and hurtful. I don't want you to read this and think "Oh, Lorraine's drunk, that's why she wrote that cruel letter-post to me on her blog."
I don't want that excuse. I don’t need it.
I want you to be hurt. I want you to be hurt by words written when I'm sober, so you'll know that I wrote it with complete rationality of thought and no added courage flowing through my veins.
And I feel, if I got drunk, I'd think once again about all the reasons I should forgive you (admittedly very few, but there are still some) and maybe I'll be insane and really do.
I've muddled through our friendship long enough using only feelings and kindness as my supposed tour guide. If anything good has come out of our farce of a friendship, it's that I've learned that rationality is important in a friendship also.
And rationality tells me this: it's stupid to want to be a friend of someone who'll just kick you around again once your defenses are down.
My cousin hands me the microphone again, and I shake away these thoughts and squint at the screen again. Yet these thoughts stay in the back of my mind, and they'll surely come back clearly to me when I rub the sleep from my eyes come the morning.
And the Coke and the beer stay untouched side by side, blending into the table and into the shadows until they disappear from my sight.
***
Sometimes love has to take a backseat to everything else, you know.
That time is now, but it won’t be for evermore.
Although it is nice to think that my last cry was induced not by angst but by prolonged aerial exposure to formalin.
But I can’t keep on running away forever, and I’m just waiting for the time when my path runs out and I slam into a brick wall.
***
And you try again, and I am reminded why I hate instant messengers. Honestly, the first time I use it in a long time (for schoolwork, no less) and you put me off it again with your deceiving messages sent at the wrong time and the wrong place. Then again, every time is the wrong time and everywhere we’re not face-to-face is the wrong place.
Am I cruel for not replying? I guess I am. Propriety demands that I at least reply to your message, no matter how distasteful, without feeling, and how fake it is. Then I remember what happened the last time (and please make it the last time) I followed propriety and I think I made the right decision.
Your words, I’ve heard them before. Tell me something new this time, or at least change the words. I’m sure you’re competent enough to check an online thesaurus.
I repeat, I repeat, and I repeat myself again: I’m not that kind. I’m not that naïve. I’m not that trusting anymore. If you’re going to try at all, put some more effort in it at least. And I'm not about to jeopardize my chance at contentment just to give you 'peace of mind.'
***
Okay. In light of it being Martin Luther King Day two weeks ago, I found out that Mr. King was murdered in Lorraine Hotel. (Thankfully it has been demolished.)
My birthname becomes more and more auspicious. *rolls eyes*
***
Around a year ago, Judith-san posted on her blog about FutureMe.org.
My email from a year ago just arrived, and it’s very odd to read something addressed to the present you from the you a year back.
I laugh at what I wrote in that email to myself, but maybe I envy my relative optimism and innocence reflected in that email. I realize how cynical I’ve become ever since so many events after January 2006 passed, how mistrustful, how sad I am now.
It’s interesting to look back. But I don’t think I want to go back to those days (because we all know what comes up in February 2006). I want to go to before that, or just stay here in the present, or just skip to the future.
At that point in my life, I was realizing that what I thought was my future was nothing but a carefully spun fairytale-like wish that would fall down around me once I started living it. And I couldn’t do anything about it, I thought back then, because the forms had been signed and the results have been coming out.
And by a series of unexpected events (some sad, some happy, some infuriating) I end up here a year later, enrolled in a course I thought I never could qualify for, having friends I never knew I'd meet, learning about frog muscles and man not having instincts and even the special hybridization notation technique.
I’ve lost the point of this rumination; nevertheless, I am still trying to be happy now.
That’s one thing that hasn’t changed about me in a year. Of course, years may pass before I actually achieve it, if I even ever do.
***
Poison makes me sleepy.
I stay in the back, though, so I can sleep to my heart’s content. (Unless there’s a test, of course.) Sleep or write in my planner or even do the Math module. >_<
Of course, poison sometimes weakens with time. Other times, it gets stronger, somehow evolves into a more destructive and virulent form of itself, because it was left to survive how many years.
In our case… it’s probably the latter.
***
[Part 1 of a two-part series, the second part to be posted when I finish typing it up.]
I think when we of Block 13 of Intarmed 2013 die, we will spend millions of years in Purgatory doing penance for many counts of school-sanctioned murder (otherwise known as frog dissection).
While we were relatively kind to our frogs at first (relatively kind being that we paralyzed our frogs before skinning and cutting and dissecting them), we quickly became crueler and started taking parts of frogs while the frog was still very much alive and not paralyzed.
Imagine a perfectly healthy frog, valiantly trying to hop away into the wilderness that is UP Manila, being held down by three or four girls with a male skinning its hind leg. Imagine how it keeps trying to jerk away its skinned leg (and not skinned leg) from the hands of those people holding them, or how it keeps its eyes open even if its head is covered by latex-protected hands. Imagine its alarm as we separate a muscle from his leg, cutting it until we reach its long Achilles tendon and eventually separate it completely from its body. Imagine the red blood, dark red blood that flows when my classmate cuts a blood vessel by accident, making our laboratory table look like a crime scene.
Maybe it is, because we didn’t use chloroform on the frog beforehand like the other block did, nor did we destroy part of its nervous system before we made the preliminary incisions. But I swear it just went missing when it was time for it; we found it after we had skinned a lower limb already.
It didn’t work anyway, because we made it smell the chloroform and it refused to die.
We had all been wondering about the frog’s tongue, because when we opened the mouths of our preserved frogs the tongues had turned gray and tough and were… odd. We took a look at the tongue of our frog and were intrigued - the tongue is pink and is stuck at the tip of the mouth inside nearest the lip area (as opposed to our tongues which are stuck to the backs of our mouths). We wondered why it was positioned so oddly, but I reckon it was placed there so that the frog could aim higher/more long-range (because if the tongue’s base was at the middle of the mouth inside, it would reach nearer distances only).
When we finished our experiment on the kinds of muscle twitches (finished being that we gave up on the very old apparatus working in sync with the frog muscle and our teacher just drew the different graphs on the blackboard), we all watched my friend continue the dissection of the poor poor frog. He skinned the frog with a relatively practiced hand (this was probably his second/third time), investigating every inch of the poor frog’s body. (He actually got the dorsal skin off in one piece - hee, one could sew it up and make a wallet considering its size) At this point, we thought the frog was dead because my friend had taken off all the skin of the frog, scraped off some of its fat (I repeat, frog fat is icky - it’s like yellow pompoms yet with the consistency near the mango's), studied most of the muscles (and cut some, even), and finally ripped the frog’s head off because he wanted to do brain extraction.
It’s creepy to hold the head of a frog in your hand. Looking at it, you’ll have the head (with eyes, mouth, the skin of the head, etc.) and attached to it would be the frog’s vertebral column. It’s sort of like a fish with only the bones left, although without the tail. Anyway, he embarked on the harrowing journey and we watched him with morbid fascination. It took a long time, so he rested for a while. At this point, some people decided to ask our teacher about the frog heart and what it looked like. Our teacher then poked around the frog’s chest, looking for it and suddenly we all noticed that the chest was faintly moving up and down.
So even after everything, the frog was still alive. At least its heart was. Our teacher tried to find the heart (scattering the other chest muscles and blood on the dissecting pan) but it stayed hidden. We all wondered at the tenacity of our frog (or at least its heart) that it still beat after we violated it at least one hour ago.
Eventually, my friend continued with his search for the elusive frog brain with us all watching interestedly. (As of this time, we had been disintegrating all the brains of the frogs we had, so we had not actually seen a completely intact frog brain). He opened the frog’s mouth again (which was easier to open compared to the mouths of our preserved frogs) and worked from there.
A frog brain is white. It’s sort of like a cotton bud, only with lobes and some blue veins running through it. (Now that I think about it, the frog brain sort of looks like white cheese.) It’s quite small; I’ve seen earrings larger than it. :) (Especially those dangling earrings Moncie-san would wear sometimes in Pisay, hee.)
But that was the penultimate fascinating thing for that day. Our teacher then smiled at us and suggested we take out the frog’s eyes (from its head) and examine them. Our eyes all widened and my friend went to work on the eyes, yet they refused to pop out of the head. >_< I think it was our teacher who finally took pity on us (or she was impatient to see our reactions to the naked eyeballs of the frog - we’re a very reactive class, we have screams, squeals, etc.) and popped out the two eyeballs, and they fell on the white tiled laboratory table and rolled towards some of our classmates.
Holding an eye… even if it is of a less evolved species is fascinating. It was black and round and actually a little bigger than I expected it to be. They weren’t soft exactly, they were somewhat firm. My classmate held them level with her eyes and we tried to take a picture of her, but she didn’t want a picture of her with frog eyes replacing her own. >_<
You know something, though? I really wonder what kind of person we of Imed 2013 are to be fascinated by this type of school-sanctioned murder over and over again. (More insights on this in Part 2, where we do something utterly new with the frogs.)