Marianna Paige - Her Words and Tumblr

Constant TUMBLR users like me would definitely agree that TYPEWRITER Quotations has become one of the favorite post to be re-blogged on everyone's dashboard. Some termed it "typos" or "words" while I just simply refer to it as some random poetic pieces from various modern people who are gifted enough with creative brain capable of awesome vocab. Typewriter quotes are what we call them, because they are words  literally typed from a typewriter. I don't know why it became so "in" for tumblr bloggers, but I guess maybe because words when typed especially on an old papyrus/rustic piece of paper will make it look whimsical or creatively vintage , a theme that never goes out of style on making poetry looks poetic , putting some visual effect of touchy-feel on it.  Aside from typewritten quotes, hand written ones are also a constant re-blog in tumblr , especially when majority of those who recognizes them relates to its every line. Admit it, when you come across with some words you've never said before yet you realize it's exactly the  things you wanted to say if only you've formed them right up in your head, it's totally a pull of string from your very core. Hehe. Wow that was deep. But yeah, It's true right? Some of us aren't born verbally expressive, that is why we borrow words and we quote them.

This is exactly what made me tackle about this certain person from tumblr who makes honest to goodness beautiful essays. She's Marianna Paige. Her first essay that I've seen was in Instagram posted by Lauren Young and here's why I loved it :

 

 

Don't you think it's beautiful? Ahhh! Insert three hearts here! Hehe.This is exactly what I'd also write to my future lover if - let's say - if I'm as clever as Marianna Paige in carefully choosing the right set of words to mean what I say. The second time I saw another essay piece of her was on Pinterest so I immediately googled her name from there on and found out she's no famous author but just a regular girl somewhere. And she's in Tumblr!  Marianna , on how I notice her regular tumblr posts is just a 20 year old normal blogger who also curses  like a normal person and procrastinates a lot about the usual shits of life. I bet she never expected nor intended for her name to spread across the web. What I also like about her style aside from being direct while still sounding poetic is her depth and brutal honesty about the real thing. She once pointed out in her blog that everything she writes about are not based on the liking of her readers but on how she just wanted to channel down her thoughts regardless of how emo-ish and sobber she might sound. Indeed, when you want  heavy thoughts of yours unloaded , might as well be direct and true and express it the right way, be it in the form of arts, music or writing. Coz you never know it might turn out like a mirror , where people look at it and they see themselves too.

 

Here are the other samples of Marianna's works :

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"You make list on your head about what you want in a lover, like brown hair and a sweet voice. A sharp mind and a soft heart , a sense of humor that actually makes you laugh like you mean it. This and That. And it's all bullshit because people aren't lists. And I've always wanted to be the person who made someone realize that. I want to come cross someone with a list in their head that is nothing like the person I am, and I want to show them what they didn't even know they were looking for. People who think they know what they want are fooling themselves. Nobody really knows what or who they want. Not until it's right in front of them." - Marianna Page

Click to visit Marianna's tumblr page and view her complete archive of writings. 

 

 

 

Batang ‘90s : Part I – Childhood Toys

1990 is my birth year and by the time it started and moved towards the first 2 years of 2000, the years that held most of my happy childhood memories were brought to pass. As far as my memory is concerned, I was able to recall those significant objects that become symbolic of my juvenility days. I am quite grateful that I was allowed to enjoy my childhood and was left to become a kid and act just like most of the kids in our neighborhood were given the privilege to. Although there were moments when my mother would always make us help on the household jobs and on our owned small selling business, she wasn’t really that strict on allowing us to get dirty and play outside. And even if we aren’t that rich, we still received fair accumulation of toys to enjoy.

So as part of my project ‘90s posts, I’ll start with enumerating my top favorite ‘90s TOYS. Some of these had now become obsolete while others were recreated.  And I’m sure most of the pictures below are very familiar to you too, well, unless you aren’t a mighty ninety’s kid. Hehehe. Here we go.

1. Mattel Dolls

These used to be one of McDonald’s happy meal collections of mini Barbies. I remember I got three; two of them looked exactly the same as the picture here. It became trendy to young girls around years ’96 and ’97. I would bathe them, made them beds from folded handkerchiefs, cut their hair and even brought them with me to church every Sunday mass.

 

2. Brick Game

Who wouldn’t remember these, for Christ’s sake? This puzzle game is also popularly known as Tetris but uses tiny gray blocks instead.  It’s quite addictive and served as a very good past time for bored kids and teenagers when PSPs and Nintendos were still unaffordable. It was later on refurbished from bulky handheld gadgets into cellular phones replicas that will make you looked like you’re texting when in reality you’re just busy filling the blocks. And hey, I could still remember that familiar tone it makes whenever the lines are cleared and every time you leveled up.

 

 

3. Old School Gameboys

Thanks to my father who bought us one when he was abroad. This became handy when I learned how to play it and when I got addicted playing the Tamagotchi-like game , I forgot the name, where I get to take care of an alien pet  that looked more like an onion with a face , nurture it until it lays egg and die and so forth. Gameboys before are still set with tapes to be inserted in the back unlike today when Gameboys are being made with built in memories.

 

 

 

4. Play-Doh

Play-Dohs are the same with Clays but probably safer than Clays I think. And I remember it is softer and malleable than most normal clays were. It’s a great medium to get creative back then, when my sister and cousins and I would mold something fun out of it, mostly food forms, so we’ll have some pseudo foods to use during our play house sessions. I guess Play-Dohs are still well appreciated by kids ‘til now.

 

 

5. Rainbow Slinkys

Having to toss this non-complex spiral creation with my hands was just enough bustle to keep me entertained whenever I don’t feel like joining in to outdoor vigor. My slinky doesn’t last for days, though. It becomes all tangled up soon after I’m bought with a new one.

6. Troll Dolls
 
I can’t remember exactly why trolls became so “in” as toys. They looked cute at the same time creepy. I was able to collect some, those kinds with no gems stuck on their bellies.

7. Marbles / Jolens

Geez. Remember those days when you get to compete against your play mates on who have collected the most number of Jolens?  There are lots of ways to play marbles and one of them was to aim and shoot it into a dirt hole, rocking it like billiard and golf balls. I remember I was so fascinated with the colorful insides of a marble, wondered how it’s made, and if I’ll ever get to retrieve the ribbon like something inside these crystal balls if I break them, but turned out, they are just colored ball glasses. Jolens aren’t extinct yet but how we used to play it on our own before, even us girls, made us truly remember the days.

 

 

 

 

8. Polly Pockets

This is the only toy item in this list that I didn’t get the chance to own but the toy I consider as one of my favorite toy ever. My childhood best friend named Maricar would let me play her beautiful sets of polly pockets every time I went to stay at their house to play. I just adore its miniature cute details, the mini objects forming  a mini salon, mini spa, mini mall, mini resort, and you get to manipulate these tiny people around it. I enjoyed it so much, well actually,  I got crazy with it!! Hehe.

 

 

 

 

9. Anime Cards/Teks

In bisaya terminology we call these small cards, “teks” while the act of playing it was commonly called “apir apir”. Nyahaha. These cards usually held the faces of the famous cartoon characters from those popular afternoon TV shows before (Dragon Ball Z, Flame of Recca, Pokemon etc.).  I’m guilty playing this with my boy cousin. I don’t really collect cards, I would only gather a few and play it with my cousin then I get to own more if I win. Playing it was just simply placing the card faced up in your palm, then using the same hand with the card sticking to it , you’re supposed to give your rival a strong high five. Whoever gets their card lying on the ground faced up, he wins more cards from the other.

 

 

 

 

10. Paperdolls

For us little pinoy girls, (us commoners. Hehe)  not getting the chance to own or play paper dolls was a childhood not completely lived.  Unlike today, when the cost of a peso could still buy us something decent, it was pure joy to go to a street vendor or a mini store to pay only one peso for one - if you’re luckier, more paper doll sets. My best friend Mimie and I used to be so “into it” that we didn’t really care if we should be getting junk foods instead. We see to it that we had that latest Sailormoon  , the Jessie and James or the Power puff girls set then we’d go on through the summer collecting, dressing up our cardboard dolls and playing them up ‘til we’re sick of it.



 

 

 

11. Plastic Balloon

 

The famous plastic balloons formed from those cheap colorful pastes  packed with that tiny tube stick. I was feeling proud with myself every time I created big clear balloons , loved popping it up with holes so I can blow more air into it, until it bulges and pops away. Sounds gross, but I sometimes thought of chewing it like a bubblegum coz it tastes good. Hehe.



 

 

 

12. Jackstone

 

Although I sucked a little with this kind of game, it’s my favorite indoor play. The bouncing of the ball and the satisfaction you get for scooping up the entire “stars” would give you a goody feeling. My sister used to be the pro on this while I’d only make it up to picking one and then two stars.

 

 

 

 



13. Snake n’ Ladder

 

Visual representation of the cause and effect of life.  You know, Karma. We’ve been playing it since childhood. Hahaha.

 

 





 

 

14. Tirador

Best defense for bullies but unbelievably painful when it backfires and hits you.

 

 

15. Yoyo and Trompo

 

I still don’t know how to play yoyo longer than one minute for a decade now. Shame.

 

 

 





Facebook Addiction : An Opinion

Just A thought.

Unless you're an overseas worker who constantly needs update from family and friends, I think it's best and healthier for some people to reduce their time off from using FB. Instead of dwelling too much time reading who says what, who went where, who's going out with whom and peeking over whatever else's are going on with everybody's lives, why not start living yours? Or continue with your own productiveness connecting yourself more to what's happening in real world than here online. Why is it so important for you to know what's everyone been doing on a daily basis? When you yourself should be doing fine.
Why won't you , for once, try to stop scrolling down the newsfeed area, log out and look around you, you might get to notice that your bathroom needs some cleaning, the plant outside needs some watering, that your little cousins or siblings need someone to play with or teach them math, that somebody around you might need some friendly talk more than any of your FB chat mates does, or you can go somewhere nice, or do something non-sedentary. You can measure up how much hours you consume online and try to imagine yourself using those hours into completing sensible tasks, you could have accomplished more. You might not even know that somebody around you got it long abhorring your lazy ass. And for me, it will be more exciting to find a long lost friend or a high school batch mate down the road and catch up with their stories that you've missed for years, then be surprised with it , coz hell yeah, Facebook didn't tell you first. My point is to not detest facebook completely, Of course not! I'm also using it as frequently as necessary but my regard is how much time I'm giving in to waste. Well. This is something to ponder on. Are you a facebook addict? Is it healthy? Did it caused you good? If your answers to it were Yes, and No and No. You're too old now to not know something about self control.

First.

One of the little things that I would like to accomplish this year, as part of Karen’s checklist of “things to do during your twenties”, is to create a blog filled with stuffs about my personal travels, foods, current events, interesting people, movie and book preferences I’d love to tackle about through writing.  I have not chosen a particular theme or main label to associate with this blog since I’ve intended to create this just to serve as my online journal or sort of like a cyber-portal that will lead any reader into my creative zone on a superficial level. I have so many plans for this blog and I’m super excited to fill this up with interesting contents. I just really hope that I’d be able to find the will to maintain this considering the fact that I am lazy. It even feels painstakingly challenging to think of trying to manage this thing over time.  Although I love English as my favorite school subject, I admit I’m not really good in it especially when it comes to proper grammar composition and choosing the right verbs, adverbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives to suit on whatever I’m trying to mean in every statements I say.  I also find the need to widen my vocabulary.

 Blogging is a hard task. Yes, easy to begin with but seem so difficult to maintain for months or years  but I’m quite determined to give it a shot and part of the difficulties I’m aware I’ll constantly struggle with is my not so good English writing or my wobbly thought delivery. I guess my deficiency in writing and composition led me to doing this because I assume blogging will help me harness my English skills. Each blog post I’ll be writing in days to come will be a perfect mean to practice and before I knew it, my English proficiency is developed. Not that being an expert in English language is a big deal but since I love to communicate and express my thoughts through writing, I want to get better at it. I want to excel on things I love doing. Anyway, a few people will probably wonder why I came up with naming my blog “Notebook ni Karya”. Well, I did not really base it on something extraordinary. The idea of naming my blog as if it’s a piece of a notebook is fitting to how I used to keep my random thoughts in an actual notebook, where I would scribble on any matters that appear memorable to me on a particular day. I did not necessarily call it a diary, just a mini journal. It started and often happened during my high school days and some days during college. Sadly, I lost those notebooks and the memories inside it. I’m still a big big fan of using pens and manually writing things on a paper but with all these gadgets in front of us to make things more efficient and organized, I’m turning my writing into typing and putting these words into the internet so I can share it to anybody, except telling anything too personal and emotional of course.

 It’s easier to revive and recall a memory when some visual stuff triggers it. May it be on a photograph, a video, an artwork, an old object,  a letter, or any written materials for that matter, it’s quite helpful to put down a precious memory or thought into something that will hold it and preserve it for quite some time. On my case, I’ve decided to keep it through blogging so that someday when I’m a bit older, as long as I and the internet lives, there’s always a big chance to recollect the important things that used to contain some bits of my silliness, idiocy, innocence, fondness, and honesty, those important things that will make me remember what I used to love, to hate, to enjoy and to cherish during some time in my past.. and maybe by the moment I reread them in the future, I can easily compare If I am still the same person I used to be when I was writing those blog entries  or whether some part of me has finally changed.