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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.
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Bibliography
The Great Little Hunter
Pinspired Philippines, 2022
The Boy The Girl
The Rat The Rabbit
and the Last Magic Days
Chapbook, 2018
Republic of Carnage:
Three Horror Stories
For the Way We Live Now
Chapbook, 2018
Bamboo Girls:
Stories and Poems
From a Forgotten Life
Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2018
Don't Tell Anyone:
Literary Smut
With Shakira Andrea Sison
Pride Press / Anvil Publishing, 2017
Cupful of Anger,
Bottle Full of Smoke:
The Stories of
Jose V. Montebon Jr.
Silliman Writers Series, 2017
First Sight of Snow
and Other Stories
Encounters Chapbook Series
Et Al Books, 2014
Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop
Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
Handulantaw: Celebrating 50 Years of Culture and the Arts in Silliman
Tao Foundation and Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, 2013
Inday Goes About Her Day
Locsin Books, 2012
Beautiful Accidents: Stories
University of the Philippines Press, 2011
Heartbreak & Magic: Stories of Fantasy and Horror
Anvil, 2011
Old Movies and Other Stories
National Commission for Culture
and the Arts, 2006
FutureShock Prose: An Anthology of Young Writers and New Literatures
Sands and Coral, 2003
Nominated for Best Anthology
2004 National Book Awards
Follow the Spy
Recent Crumbs
Blogs I Read
© 2002-2021
IAN ROSALES CASOCOT
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
I filed my income tax return last week. The taxable amount glared at me like a wart on paper. I pay the government this much every year?
Highway robbery. I want a street named after me!
I needed some cooling down.
So last Sunday, Mark and I were doing our bit of Sunday strolling, something we used to do often but haven't done in a long time. I've been busy salvaging stories (to some degree of success) and preparing for the summer term, and he has been busy graduating from college and shooting TV shows. It is remarkable how so much clutter disguised as responsibilities make up our lives, we forget to actually live.
In Lee Super Plaza, we'd do our regular route of browsing the second-hand books and magazines at the mezzanine, eating
siomai (and sometimes tacos) at the Food Court, then going on to the kitsch on display at the downstairs knick-knacks department: all those figurines and picture frames and candles and lamps and fake flowers of astonishing bad taste I wonder who buys these things. We become more excited when we get to the kitchen ware section, and the furnitures, and we wonder: why is that so? Have we become so domesticated together?
At the toy store, we revert to being children. All those Spongebobs and toy cars and funny dolls and stuffed toys and mechanical snakes to occupy our fancy! Then I saw some board games, the kind I used to play with as a kid, something that brought families and friends together: Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Bingo, Monopoly, Snake and Ladders, Clue...
I don't know anybody -- kids or adults -- who play board games these days. With that, and taxes, the world becomes so much sadder.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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