Mr. Depression, Ms. Shrink and Mr. God (or Alcohol is the shit. or The Whatever Post)

I’ve written before about how I might have been suffering from a really bad case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Well, I’m 100% sure that I’m suffering from it now.

This doesn’t surprise me the least since after being prescribed antidepressants and after my psychiatrist issued a moratorium on all of my activities that involve alcohol, I’ve continued to indulge in drinking habits which doctors like my psychiatrist say is “not healthy.”

So yes, maybe I had it coming and Christ, this type of depression severely makes me infirm. Imagine working an average of eleven hours a day, getting off and coming home hoping to get a good night’s sleep but instead, you duke it out with insomnia and end up thinking and getting depressed over such mundane things as nuclear fallout, money, and who’d be the next pope.

Honestly speaking though, I don’t really give a rat’s ass about this most of the time. I mean sure, I get borderline suicidal at its worst but my preoccupation with work and pleasant thoughts such as crushing pussy or racism manage to keep it at bay.

The entire thing crumbles when my depression gets in the way of me having fun. You know how it is over the holiday season: I mean you don’t have to be a medical professional to be able to conclude that drinking an average of eleven beers a night is not the best thing to do if you’re suffering from severe depression.

Christmas eve was when the wheels really came off. What with my mighty triumvirate of depression, panic attacks and what is the medical equivalent of a restraining order banning me from being within three meters of an alcoholic drink. My neighborhood friends who know about my medical history, restrictions and the “drink until you cannot recognize basic shapes or colors” tradition we are about to engage in said something to the effect of “dude, you can have fun without drinking.” to which I responded “you guys are fucking fags. You obviously haven’t tried imbibing an entire bottle of brandy in less than an hour. Now THAT’s fun.”

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GarageBand Wednesday: Mr. Brightside / Seek and Destroy

Here’s a video from my band’s gig at Freedom Bar.

Seek and Destroy (Metallica Cover)

And here’s a video from my company’s Christmas party where we played a song from a band I really don’t get.

Mr. Brightside (The Killers)

Enjoy. Oh and Merry Christmas. Or something.

Fucking zit

I’ve always had relatively great skin. I mean it’s not super smooth or anything but I’ve never had pimple problems. The worst I had to deal with were a bad case of white heads which I pricked the shit out of leaving my cheeks badly pock marked.

Also, white heads are gummy and they taste a lot like butong pakwan. Just saying.

Anyway, as much as I want to be thankful for my skin, I’m not as I feel like this is the least God could’ve done for me after totally going crazy on me by making me fat, giving me a goofy face and all sorts of mild mental illnesses. It was as if Moses walked in on God going crazy on me, pulled him off of me and said “Dude, you need to take the chill pill! Nobody deserves to be that ugly, let’s at least give him relatively great skin!”

But when I get stressed, a ginormous pimple would periodically appear on the same spot on my forehead. And when I say ginormous I mean GINORMOUS; it’s like another person is growing out of my face. Seriously, the last time I got this zit, I could make out the contours of little legs sticking out of the mass.  Back in 1993, I could’ve sworn my zit said “Wake up ‘tard-face!” to me while I was sleeping.

Whatever. Right now, the pimple I have is just a small red rash but I know this is going to fucking erupt in like three hours. Just in time for my date with the girlfriend.

I have nothing else. Fuck me.

Sorry 37 Signals, but you should really give your marketing strategy more credit

I’ve always admired 37 Signals as a company ever since I read Getting Real over a year ago. But when Matt Linderman wrote about formulating what, in my opinion, are marketing strategies based on self promotion and “riding the wave” I lose a modicum of respect for them.

From Signal Vs. Noise, 37Signals’ blog:

8. Ride the wave. Seek momentum and ride it. Is everyone buzzing about the iPhone? Then make an iPhone app. Are people interested in rapid development processes? Then blog about building your app in, say, under a month. Find out what people are talking about already and then figure out a way to get in the picture.

First of all, we all know that the market doesn’t need another mediocre product and how, pray tell, is the “ride the wave” mentality going to allow R&D teams to come up with a proverbial Purple Cow?

Starbucks became a Purple Cow not by “Riding the wave” and releasing a complementary creamer for Maxwell House coffee but by boldly introducing the phenomenal coffee bar concept to a market that, at that time, seemed to be unreceptive to the idea.

And even 37Signals as a company did not “Ride the wave” to get in the frame. The fact that their first product, Basecamp showcased the organic unity of milestone management, messaging, files sharing, and to-do list never before seen made it a remarkable product that took little time to spread virally–a Purple Cow.

Surely, Matt Linderman et al. know that they should give themselves more credit.

And about the “Self Promotion” bit, I think Seth Godin says it best:

37 Signals, as usual, has a thoughtful post about self promotion.

Except they missed the biggest part, by a mile.

They don’t do self-promotion. Self-promotion, as the term is used by many people, is a mildly pejorative way to describe someone who promotes himself at the expense of others.

Nobody says, “That Yo Yo Ma, he’s so self-promotional,” or, “can you believe what a self-promoter the Dalai Lama is?” That’s because they’re not promoting themselves. They’re promoting useful ideas. They’re promoting tactics or products that actually benefit the person they’re reaching out to.

Paris Hilton is a self-promoter. You don’t get any benefit out of her appearances other than temporary entertainment value and some schadenfreude. The guys at 37 Signals have never done a bit of self-promotion in their entire careers. That’s because they’re doing you-promotion, not me-promotion.

Yes, yes and yes.

A really really broke(n) Christmas

If, like me, you are a totally unsuccessful junior executive / alcoholic Internet star; chances are Christmas doesn’t mean shit to you anymore. The days when I would go around the city with a cute new outfit to visit my godparents and “collect” are long gone.

I could barely remember the days when I’d spend hours on end sitting on my bedroom floor to open red envelopes and draw the wad of crisp 20 peso bills (which to a ten year-old, is equal to around 150,000 pesos of the currency someone like me earns today)  from them.

Since I got a job that paid higher than my first job, which was a terrible call center gig, Christmas stopped being a highly-anticipated holiday and became more of a nuisance than anything else. Think about it: For the first time in my 25 years of existence, I feel like I am expected to buy presents for people other than myself.

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