My stress levels, however, have gotten to a point where I strongly detest driving on account of me getting pissed off by other drivers a little too easily, and a lingering fear that the bouts of road rage I have would, someday, end up in homicides. Multiple, violent homicides.

So yeah, earlier this week I was invited to attend a press event over at hotel near where I work. Since the venue was only 3 blocks away from the office and I really want to avoid driving as much as I can, I decided to take a cab to get there.

So I flag down a cab, get in and–before I go on–a disclaimer:

A lot has been said in this blog about people from the provinces but, truth be told, I have nothing but respect for them.

I mean really, how can you not respect people who leave their quaint little home town and cross the seas to find a better life in Manila? These people do seventy-hour weeks in department stores or factories so they can buy Magic Sings so they’d have something to entertain their drunkard friends the next time they come over the small-ass apartment they’re renting.

All this while overachieving people like me get high paying jobs landing on their laps, spend their time magically turning a good chunk of their salary into alcohol and end up blowing almost PhP 5,000 pesos on various sexy girl webcam access sites because they’re stressed and miserable. And horny.

That said, it turns out that the guy who drives the cab I got into is from the province and speaks little Filipino, let alone, English. Now, I usually sit in the front passenger seat of cabs and talk to drivers a lot so, after getting in, I said “The EDSA Shangri-La” and asked him how his day has been so far.

He replied in what sounded like heavily-accented Filipino, most of which I couldn’t make any of. So I thought, no biggie, probably not a good idea to converse with somebody who doesn’t speak much Filipino. It’s all good though, as long as he takes me where I need to go.

The EDSA Shangri-La is around 10 minutes away from the office. Five minutes into the ride, I get a feeling that the guy doesn’t know where the fuck he’s going. “You can turn right on the street after San Miguel Avenue” I suggested, he looked at me with a face that couldn’t be more unenthused and nodded. I took it as a “Yes, fat chops, I’m a cab driver, I know where the fuck I’m going so why don’t you just shut the hell up and relax?” So, I leaned back on my seat and did.

As we neared the corner leading to the hotel, I said “That’s the building right there [pointing], you can drop me off where it’s safe” Again, he looked at me and nodded, and again, I leaned back and tried to relax. As we approached Shangri-La, I noticed that he wasn’t slowing down to pull over. Already missing our destination, I said “You can just drop me off right here” even if “right here” was already a hundred meters past where I was supposed to get off.

At this point, I remembered why exactly I sit in the passenger seat whenever I ride cabs–So that I can easily open a can of whoopass on the driver if he tries anything funny like say trying to Kidnap me to hold me for ransom–and really, that was what was running through my head at that point. The guy, after all, was zooming farther from where I intended to get off at 60KPH. I said, more firmly “That was my stop right there, turn the cab around..no, on second thought, I’ll just get off here. Stop the car!”

I forget what I said exactly but I finally got him to pull the cab over at the EDSA side of the far end of SM Megamall–a good block away from where I wanted to get off.

Before getting off, I explained to him, largely through an intricate sign language routine, that I was trying to get off there [pointing to the Shangri-La] and not here [pointing down] but he just looks like he doesn’t get it.

I seriously could’ve gotten further in the conversation with a stray dog and, moreso, with a chimpanzee who, I’ve been told, are slightly more intelligent.

Seriously, what the fuck was that? I respect the fact that Filipino or English probably wasn’t the guy’s first language and he’s really just trying to make a living. But come on, how much Filipino/English do you have to understand and know how to say as a Taxi driver? We’re talking just knowing what left, right, turn around, “there” and “stop” means here.

How would you like it if you came up to me and asked “Mikey, I need the revenue projection report for our Q4 Holiday campaign” and me, staring at you for a good 10 seconds before finally saying “Thank you Mario, but the princess is in another castle.”

Christ.

How about such a shitty week where grand money-making schemes permeate every minute of your consciousness because you know, that come month end, the credit card companies are going to lay down the hurt on you and the only way you’re going to get out of it is by either becoming a full-time criminal, taking up a new identity somewhere in the Ilocos region working as a dynamite fisherman or fake your own death altogether?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was the sort of week I had last week. So, naturally, I did what I know best to alleviate the sheer frustration I felt and that is to drink my self fuck silly.

On Sunday, I called my friend Jay who I knew was going to be drinking with my other friend Marco and his wife. Sure enough, the three of them were at Jay’s house popping bottles of Red Horse I joined them for a few bottles and after getting a good buzz going, I invited them out to a nearby local grill for a change of ambiance.

This was when things started to head down the pits.

I should’ve expecte this. I mean you put three of the toughest drinkers this side of Fairview in a grill that had a promo that entitles you three 500ml bottles of Red Horse* for a hundred bucks. We were the only patrons in the grill so we controlled what sort of music the joint played (I brought my iPod). We knew the grill manager and we were getting free alcohol left and right. Everyone of us were having problems that range from babies to girlfriends. Seriously, I can not think of a more perfect recipe for a clusterfuck of disasters.

(*Second time I mentioned Red Horse in this post. Seriously, if any of you Red Horse people are reading this, I am quite disappointed at the fact that I don’t have an endorsement deal with you guys yet. Think about it: Internet Celebrity + Red Horse = Huge Success. Just think about it.)

What ensued were hours of good old-fashioned power drinking. Three dudes, two of whom suffer from mild alcoholism and substance dependence, swinging glasses and glasses of beer down like how real men should do it–really fat, angry men who are mad at mothers-in-law, the price of diapers, harpy women and no-good politicians (well not really politicians. I just threw it in there because I realized the things we’re mad about aren’t really socially significant)

I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t eat a proper dinner but I got shit-faced quick and I mean quick. I practically had the alcohol tolerance of an infant and was belting out Aerosmith on the Videoke machine at the latter part of the night. As what’s expected of a champion alcoholic like myself, I lost track of time. When I saw that it was almost midnight, I said goodbye to everyone, left money on the table which I thought, at that time, covered what I consumed (I realized the next morning that 1,700 bucks wasn’t nearly “fair” considering all I had was 7 bottles of Red Horse. So Jay and Marco, if you’re reading this, you fucking owe me), got in my car and started driving home.

I was practically running on empty though, so I hit the nearest gas station to fill my car up. I also badly needed to take a leak at that point so I stepped out of my car and headed towards the rest rooms. Because my brain was half-filled with beer and some weird, inexplicable sense of immortality and vigor, I switched from walking to the rest room to running to the rest room.

Bad fucking idea.

If you’ve been to any gasoline station in Metro Manila, you’d know that the ceramic tiles leading to them are usually covered in a messy soup made up of bus conductor piss, mud, semen (maybe, I dunno), and gasoline.

The last thing I saw as I rounded a corner before I lost my balance was my right leg shooting up. This was followed by my lower back and my other leg hitting the floor covered with the aforementioned putrid water with a loud thump.

It took me a couple of seconds to realize what had happened. I wanted to laugh but the pain in my lower back made me want to cry at the same time. It was a fucking weird feeling. Several other customers went by pretending not to notice me and trying hard not to laugh. They were followed by two forecourt attendants who were yelling at each other in bisaya while trying to help me out. I’m not sure what they were saying but if I were to hazard a guess, they were probably saying something to the effect of “It’s either he’s too fat or too drunk to walk padi! Well he does look like a rich kid so let’s help him up! He might give us coins! Also, kinantot ko asawa mo kagabi padi!”

As I lay there soaked in urine, gasoline, water and what not I had a flashback of my High School graduation day: I graduated with one of the highest honors in my district and now, eleven years later, I am rolling around in sewage being helped up by two bisaya gasoline boys.

The lesson here: Sometimes, you are not introduced to the concept of humility until you are piss drunk, your shorts soaked in urine and gasoline and until you need help from two fucking minimum wagers to get back up on your feet on a Sunday night.

See, my company is sending me over to attend The Affiliate Summit in New York  and, for some reason, I’m certain that I will die a fiery, horrible death during the flight.

Now, this fear might have something to do with my anxiety and panic disorder but I’m also willing to bet that this is what happens when you’ve let yourself go as much as I did and list your favorite past time as chowing down around twenty hot dogs and chasing them down with a liter of Gran Matador with your drunk friends every other night.

But, if there’s any good that came out of my recent session with my psychiatrist is that I have fresh prescriptions for a potent benzodiazepine which means that I will be heavily drugged up during my flight. However, based on the trend my life has taken these past few years and because of a tiff I’ve had with God after a bet we made over a Jai Alai game five years ago, I’m pretty sure he’s just setting me up and loading me with success now so that, in the future, he could watch me come crashing down hard kicking, screaming and cursing along the way.

In fact, the motivation I’ve had lately (which came out of nowhere if I may add) to live healthily (For those of you who just tuned in, I’ve been on a consistent diet and going to the gym lately) the last couple of months feels so highly suspect that I wouldn’t be surprised if my doctor tells me “Wow you lost 40 lbs since you last weighed in and it looks like you’re in the best physical shape. It also looks like you’re free of the chronic panic and anxiety disorders you’ve been previously diagnosed with. But wait, it looks like you’ve been infected with a rare tropical virus that will kill you within two weeks. No, there is no cure. And yes, you should probably drop by the price club on your way home and get a hold of a case of Emperador because, buddy, you have a lot of catching to do. Please stop crying.”

Again, since God is a sadistic voyeur who gets off watching me fail, I could imagine a similar scenario happening on my flight: Like six hours into it while the plane is over the Pacific ocean or something, volcanic dust from God knows where will clog up one of the engines and cause the plane to violently shake and eventually be sent into an abrupt, steep descent. Passengers flip the fuck out and panic–some even begin saying their prayers and this one guy even makes out with this hot girl beside him because, I don’t know, I guess he’s a perv and I guess making out (and masturbating) are the final things he wanted to do before he leaves this world. I wake up, say “Oh come on!” and cram like ten of my pills into my mouth and swallow them because I’m a douche and I’d rather die by my own hand. Then, all of a sudden, the plane levels and starts to climb; the Captain comes out of the cockpit and announces that we’ll make it and everything’s going to be fine. Everyone cheers, hugs and exchange highfives!

I, on the other hand, am doubled up on the floor with a tummy full of antidepressants and benzodiazepines, my mouth frothing and nobody on board is a doctor or shit. I die OD’ing on my pills because I’m a douchebag and because God doesn’t really like me.

Now I’m all worried that if I indeed die within the next couple of months, the only record I have of my life besides the mildewed photo album of my childhood my mom keeps, is this blog–Pages upon pages of chronicled failure replete with ineffective penis, racist and feces jokes which I tried to pass off as humor.

So do me a favor will you? Please make sure that I enjoy considerable posthumous fame. Turn this blog into a coffee table book your grandmother and her cohorts will enjoy while they rot and await the cold embrace of death. I just want to make sure that other people besides myself and the Bisaya Sampaguita Vendor I pay to read my blog entries to me while I sit in the backseat of my car masturbating will recognize my comic erudition.

Thank you.

Mike “Fucking” Villar
March 4, 1982 – September ?, 2008

Without an authoritarian, normative system of quality control in place like that of the blogosphere’s, a microblogging personality is allowed to flutter about in spaces wherever his deluded brain would take him.

Microblogging personalities, as I see them, is much like the offspring of two celebrities–they are beautifully unmoderated, and are allowed to say anything without being afraid of criticism or reprisal.

So, are you ready to transition into a brainless fame only people who live uninteresting lives like you deserve? Are you interested in enlisting yourself into the cadre of new media hippies who garner less respect than bloggers? Well allow me to hold your hand with a guide specifically structured to send you on your first glorious steps towards polluting the internet with your asininity 140 characters at a time!

Do you want to be…

The guy who still thinks speaking in LOLcat is cool?

The difference between how people think in real life and over the internet is that in real life, people actually know and accept that they might actually be painfully unfunny. After all, there must be a reason why these people have boring desk jobs instead of bringing comedy clubs down with their golden gifts of funny!

On the internet, this perception is skewed horribly that EVERYONE actually believes they are all engineers of an unstoppable LOLcomotive.

I mean seriously, LOLcat speak had a great run but nowadays, it feels as if the joke is being gangraped by thousands of casual, wannabe internet humorists and plurk and twitter are NOT spared from this.

A normal person would have let out a chuckle or two at the joke and moved on but these people must’ve thought “CATS! THAT CAN SPEAK! AND THE JOKES ARE INTENTIONALLY MISSPELLED! I MUST INTERSPERSE EVERYTHING I SAY ONLINE WITH THIS BECAUSE IT’S JUST SO GODDAMN FUNNY! HAHA HAHA HAHA!” And so it’s not uncommon to see plurk or twitter users broadcast fuckingly annoying messages like:

• “o hai gais!”
• “o bai gais! my karma is nutrishoos!”
• “I cant say anything that’s worth your attention, but I bet you want moar. Get it? More? but I typed “moar” Oh shit this is more than 140 characters, what can I delete? I have to leave “moar” there because that’s my comedic coup de grace!”

Messages like these are spread across this digital land of LOL so the uninitiated can laugh next time they see this kind of plagiarized humor printed in big bold letters on some T-shirt in a Greenhills stall.

So yes, fuck you. You’re unfunny and so is your retarded ching-chong language nobody really gives a fuck about.

Or maybe you want to be the guy who follows 24,088 friends and is just all over the fucking place?

For this kind of Twitter-user/Plurker, the compulsion to click that “follow” button in hopes that the user would reciprocate and therefore become someone he could whore his own unoriginal, unamusing thoughts to is so great that he dreams of colorful “follow” buttons in his sleep and has a condition where his index finger involuntarily twitches as if clicking a mouse button.

For these kinds of users, whoring and getting their names out there is the name of the game. So notice how they’re on. every. fucking. thread?! When replying to a plurk or twitter message such as “I feel so sad. my grandmother whom I loved dearly passed away this morning”, it’s typical for them to churn out brilliant ripostes like

• “why?” or
• “yay!”

One theory is that users like these have like REALLY small penises which they compensate for by pumping their Karmas up and unlocking smileys because really, smileys are just so awezoms!

How about the guy who doesn’t make sense nor stays on topic that didn’t make sense in the first place for more than 10 seconds

For these types of people, logic and continuity are sworn enemies. They are in a perpetual badminton match with logic and continuity and everytime they start posting tweets or plurks that make sense, logic and continuity score a point and sends the shuttlecock flying behind a huge locker and these people have to spend a good amount of time trying to move the locker and when they do finally find the shuttlecock, it’s all dusty and they have to wipe it with their white badminton shorts. What a hassle.

So, they make a point never to let logic and continuity score. These people are going to post a tweet or plurk that goes something like “What do you gais think about the president’s System of the Nation Address?”

To which, naturally, somebody would reply “You mean STATE of the Nation Address right?”

The thread ends with this type of user saying “Anyone seen The Dark Knight Yet? I like Jack Nicklaus as the joker moar than Heath!”

Oh, I know! How about the guy who says something racist every once in a while and you couldn’t really tell whether or not they’re joking?

Users like these understand that microblogging is about pushing the envelope and diversifying the mind. Unlike those tacky bloggers who all sound alike, microblogging allows users like these to broadcast plurks or tweets about how towelheads are exploiting our educational system and how those yellow chinks are virtually running our economy.

When questioned, they hit back with sarcastic replies claiming that those who disagree with them don’t have a sense of humor and how mainstream media has eroded their ability to understand satire. Then they call you a “fucking bisaya”

Before I go any further, let me just say that last night was probably one of the toughest nights I’ve had sleeping-wise. See, I crashed right after I drove home from a mini date with the girlfriend and an entire work day of trying to take in whatever it was the trainer from my company’s leadership development program was saying while sneaking in work at the same time. Doing that shit really tires the fuck out of you.

So yeah, I crashed around 12mn, woke up around 3am and couldn’t get myself to fall back asleep thanks largely to the mild anti-depressant I use to self-medicate and treat my severe anxiety with. Right around 6am, I thought to myself “Why don’t you quit dicking around, jack off, take a shower and treat yourself to a nice big meal before getting ready for work?”

But, like most of my plans in life, the entire thing fell apart mere minutes after I thought about it. After taking a shower, I sort of fell asleep on the couch, wet towel draped around my waist and all. Not that this is a bad thing since I only had 3 hours of sleep tops anyway. At this point, I was sort of playing with the idea of ditching work for the day and just catch up on sleep. But before I can come up with a decision, my next door neighbors started revving their retarded motorcycles to start their work day.

Why the fuck not right?

Why not have God screw me over on a morning where I am about to go into the deepest sleep I’ve had in a long time like I wasn’t so sleep deprived already so I can force myself to go to work to sit around dejected as fuck inside my cubicle while wondering if I’ll ever get to have sex again without shelling out thousands of pesos for it?

And because of the severe sleep deprivation that’s been bugging me a lot lately, I, and tell me if this is weird, compensated by going overboard with my food, something which totally derailed my diet.

Just to give you an idea:

Breakfast

• Tocino with 3 cups of garlic rice
• Leftover siopao from Kowloon House
• A can of coke

Pre-Lunch Snack

• Twelve pieces of Chocolate Mallows
• Iced tea
• Nescafe Ice

I know, don’t tell me; somebody who’s supposed to be on a diet has no business even going near anything that has chocolate in it, but you don’t understand. Nobody does. The thing with chocolate is that it has this effect on me where it can turn my foul moods around in an instant.

But yeah, I guess chocolate mallows and Nescafe Ice is probably the worst combination I could’ve had now that I’m on a “Bro, if you really want to get some action soon, you best cut back on sweets. Also, you’re going to have to do something about your axillary hair and the dead skin cells on your pits. God, it looks like a bunch of mountaineers roasted a goat and had some sort of bonfire in there” mindset.

Lunch

• Beef Brisket with a cup of rice
• Double Bart Burger from Burger Machine
• A can of coke

This meal is pretty passable for someone who’s on a diet. Although, I know I shouldn’t have thrown the Double Bart Burger in there. Also, I just want to say that the sauce Burger Machine uses for their Bart Burger tastes like ketchup that was filtered through a Bisaya guy’s jockstrap.

Dinner

• 2 KFC Famous bowls
• KFC Hotshots
• A brownie
• A 16 oz. glass of coke

And this is where everything fell apart. I do not remember exactly when I snapped and decided to go crazy with food but I do remember, albeit vaguely, justifying to myself why I needed to order another Famous Bowl and a brownie. I think my reasoning went along the lines of “You totally deserve it bro. After all, you didn’t get enough sleep last night. Besides, the more you eat these fatty food, the better you’re going to sleep tonight. Seriously, you can’t go wrong with this; so do yourself a solid and order another famous bowl and a brownie.”

So yeah, so much for my diet and exercising. I don’t even know why I bother to exercise by playing basketball with my friends from home. Next time, I’ll probably just bring food, sit on the sidelines and yell at everybody to “Get the fuck back down on D” with a mouthful of afritada and rice in my mouth. I’m pretty sure this will work better than the system I currently have anyway.

So, Sari-sari stores you better hide your Emperadors and parents, you better make sure that you lock up your daughters at night because in a couple of months’ time, Mike Villar will march down your streets beating my war drums like a proud orc army (and probably eating Tuna Kariman. I don’t know) and he. will. fucking. BRING IT.

In a couple of months’ time, I shall bid the familiar comfort and quasi-suburbness of Fairview. No more three hour drives to and from work, no more Bisayas stinking up the entire street with their weird-ass fish stew, no more douchebags cutting my sleep short by revving up their penis-compensating, souped up Honda XRMs, and no more fistfights with members of the Dashboard Confessional Emo Club Maligaya chapter who clog up the aisles over at SM Fairview.

Yes, in a couple of months’ time, everything will be better.

I know, don’t tell me – Pasig is not exactly as hip as this asshole’s Eastwood condo or this asshole’s Alabang estate, but guess what? I can actually walk from my future Pasig home to where I work in less than ten minutes.

But yeah, since I’m, as usual, high on Siomai as I write this, I’m getting pretty ahead of myself. Let me tell you the how and more importantly the why of how I came about taking a blind plunge towards certain bankruptcy by deciding to buy something I cannot possibly afford.

Last year, I wrote about wanting to get my own place somewhere around the Ortigas Business District. I cannot express enough how incredibly frustrating this endeavor proved to be. In fact, it was so frustrating that I think that aside from Cancer, being cheated on by your girlfriend with 50 cent or getting punched in the balls by Chuck Liddell, I can not think of anything worse.

The thing with Ortigas, and Makati and The Fort for this matter is everyone, and I mean everyone wants to live there. Every urban asshole who earns more than 40 grand a month and has a predilection to overspend scopes out these areas for a place to live. So, as a potential buyer you have to keep in mind that if you’re checking out condos in these areas and get around to liking one of them, you absolutely have no time to be irresolute.

You could be looking at a nice 2 bedroom place in the morning, contemplating on whether or not you could afford it over lunch, call the real estate agent and say that you’re going to go ahead and give a down payment only to find out that another person bought it only a couple of minutes prior.

It’s either that or get a place with an 8×8 excuse for a kitchen, two small bedrooms and a bathroom you cannot possibly be comfortable taking a shower in for a really affordable price of six million pesos!

Anyway, I will not bore you with details of how I came about finding, falling inlove and eventually scrounging tens and thousands of pesos from my parents and hunting a couple of people who owe me down to “collect” to pay the down payment for my place. (Of course, I am not keeping myself from boring you because I care for you or something, it’s just that looking back and remembering certain parts of this experience sends me into some sort of Satanic trance that invariably ends in me cutting myself.

But I’ll tell you what I can’t get over–my future house will have a sizable living area, one “master’s bed room” (for my future wife and I), one guest room (for me, when my future wife discovers I blew all our savings on gambling and a few bad investments that involve human trafficking) and a nice balcony that overlooks a clubhouse and a pool.

I also can’t get over the fact that it’s so close to everything I care about! (Well it’s far from my parents but I love them. By default.) This means that I can probably cut my monthly gasoline expenditure (which is around 10,000 pesos) by more than half! This means I’m going to have enough disposable income to do hard drugs again! Yay!

I’ve looked hard but up to now, I am having difficulty finding a single thing to hate about all of this. Of course, this is usually the case for every bad decision I’ve made in my life.

So you know, don’t be surprised if I write a blog entry entitled “I absolutely love my new place!” followed by another one entitled “Pasig sucks donkey cock” concluded by “Mike Villar’s guide to murdering your Bisaya neighbors. P.S. I’m in jail, send help” sometime soon.

But until then, I think I did myself a solid here. In fact, I can already see myself frequenting the eateries across the street and being great buddies with the waiters who would call me “Babette the Destroyer” as some sort of private joke.

And who knows? Maybe my girlfriend and I will eventually get married despite her father hating my guts because of that time I got high on meth, did like 500 push ups infront of him and screamed “Can you fucking believe how physically fit I am?” and I think he punched me or something.

I don’t remember.

(And really, is it my fault that the girl I proposed to lied about her job and wasn’t really a flight attendant but a dancer who trades her “services” for canned vegetable outside a clothing store in the middle east? I think not.)

But seriously, marriage is slowly beginning to present itself as a nascent position lately. This, I feel, is largely due to the fact that right now, I have the best girlfriend a guy could ever have. Before my girlfriend and I got together, my original plan was to marry whoever it is I’m dating by the time I turn 31 (preferably someone underage. And with dead parents, or parents who are drug addicts. Or both.)

Lately though, I find myself in a serious bind–or as my recent favorite author Seth Godin would call it: a Dip(or, who knows? Maybe even a cul-de-sac?). This “Dip” that I speak of is the fact that I feel that as if, right now, I have peaked. I am as marry-able as I’m ever going to get.

I seriously do not see myself changing for the better in any aspect from here on. Physically? I haven’t engaged myself in anything “physical” for months now (except for those rare instances when I masturbate or try to have sex). The last time I played basketball with my co-workers, I think my left lung collapsed and had an arterial blockage or something.

I think I even gained like 10 pounds this month and I cannot tell you how terrible this makes me feel. A couple of weeks ago, I purchased a pair of size 34 skinny jeans despite the fact that a size 36 would barely fit me. I feel as if I do a significant amount of damage to my intestines every time I try I zip these new jeans up.

BUT, because I have an ego and I want to dress up in whatever clothes Jake Cuenca wears on TV, I will continue to buy jeans 2 sizes smaller than my size even if they do nothing but evoke hysterical laughter from people who see me wearing them and kill me a little by slowly crushing my innards.

Professionally? Let’s be real here, my “I have an awesome job and I get paid truckloads of money” jokes notwithstanding, It’s only a matter of time before someone gets me all figured out. Not that I’m doing well now mind you, most of the people at work try and come up with inventive, non-offensive ways to say things like “You did finish college didn’t you?” or “Who do you think you’re fooling with your colorful graphs of your paltry productivity?”

Add that to the fact that I have been finding myself to be broke more often now. I downloaded this Mac Software on my laptop that supposedly helps you manage your finances and project how much you can save monthly based on your salary and your expenses. I ran some numbers and it tells me that I should be completely be bankrupt and indebted in about three months time. Awesome. Just awesome.

Emotionally? I have always been a douchebag capable of feeling only two types of emotions: an obsessive need for alcohol and lust. But slowly I’m developing a predilection towards a new emotion: Hatred. Severely embittered, I won’t be surprised if I find myself Judo chopping some elderly lady holding up the line in front of an ATM machine when clearly, there are people like me who have much more urgent needs for the money they’re going to withdraw (alcohol) than cat food or stupid pasalubong food from Greenwich.

So to my girlfriend, I humbly come to you with my hat in my hand. Please don’t leave me. Please stick long enough to marry me. I might be no George Clooney, Sean Connery, or Richard Gere, people who, if they weren’t married, grow to be more marry-able and fuck-able over time but I have something none of them have–I have heart (I don’t know what I mean by this. Don’t ask.) and I kiss really well. If by kissing “really well” means “Being kissed by me feels like being thrown a wet sponge right smack in the face by a Bisaya window washer” that is.

Now, recently, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to get my shit together, move out of my parents’ place and start looking for an affordable albeit moderately-luxurious condominium unit within Metro Manila.

And because I work somewhere in the Shaw boulevard area, I could not afford to live anywhere else but within the Ortigas Business District or somewhere not more than a 20-minute drive from it.

In an attempt to write the understatement of the year, I’ll go ahead and say that looking for a decent condominium unit in the Ortigas area is a big, lactating bitch.

It seems like everywhere you look, all you see are ridiculously high prices, weird-ass building locations, shady neighborhoods and money-grubbing realtors who look like they’d gladly stab you in the neck if it means they could get away with your money as quickly as possible.

Also, since every other young professional in Metro Manila wants to live in business districts like Ortigas or Makati, you can take comfort in knowing that while you’re out there beating the pavement, consulting with friends and looking up listings on the internet and the papers, there are literally tens of thousands of people out there doing the same thing and probably doing way better than you are.

This leads to my greatest gripe as far as looking for business district condominiums would go– They are really fucking expensive. But then again what should you expect from a district where parking costs 150 pesos for eight hours, a rice meal 90 pesos and a sloppy blow job from a Bisaya masseuse working for a “garden spa” on Emerald Avenue a whopping 300 pesos.

(The 300 peso blow job led to the argument below between the aforementioned masseuse and someone who asked not to be named because by now, most of his extended family, coworkers and maybe even his boss, reads this blog)

Unnamed Guy: [Putting robe on after getting a massage] So um, how much for…”Extra service?”

Bisaya Masseuse: [In a heavy southern accent] Sorry ser? What you mean? Step on your back?

Unnamed Guy: No, I mean [pointing to the major tenting going on inside his shorts, then to his mouth which has this sucking motion going on]

Bisaya Masseuse: Oh! Bee Jay! 300 pesos for one hour ser!

Unnamed Guy: [surprised] but I don’t need an hour, can I pay you 100 pesos for 20 minutes?

Bisaya Masseuse: No! no! 300 pesos or no Bee Jay!

(By the time the argument ended, the person decided to just go on with it. After all, it was pouring outside and he had nowhere to go. These Bisayas, so business-minded!)

See, a person living in the heart of a business district like Ortigas spends an average of 20,000 Pesos a month renting a decent condo unit. I’m sure there are cheaper places out there but 20,000 bucks is pretty much on the low side.

During my first year out of college, I worked for a BPO company in Eastwood city. Because I lived a good 40 minutes away from my former office, I thought it would be a good idea for me to rent a place near where I worked.

I got a place behind Eastwood (which isn’t that bad. Shut up.) which only cost me like 4,500 pesos a month. The place wasn’t much but it was spacious enough for me and my then girlfriend to live comfortably in. The problem was most of my friends lived in Fairview. So while I saved a ton of money on rent, I spent tons on cab fare, trying (unsuccessfully) to cheat on my girlfriend by trying to hit on girls twice my age in some nondescript city bar and buy them cocktails and pretty much spending most of my newfound wealth on necessities like CD’s, musical instruments and other shiny things that I will invariably lose or pawn eventually.

Add those to the fact that I made a couple of bad investments which pretty much secured my one way ticket to broketown. (And by “Bad investments” I actually mean “humongous gambling debts”)

After my girlfriend left me, I had the apartment to myself and thus began my awesome year of over-eating, getting shit-faced drunk and generally being ignored by members of the opposite sex.

This, my friends, is where you come in. You’re probably saying to yourself “Mikey, why are you so pathetic? Your blog is read by thousands of people everyday from countries on all seven continents. Don’t tell us you’re still trying to turn your situation into something where you could leverage it to solicit pity sex from your female readers. If, to this date, you can’t get even one woman to put your sweaty, micro light switch-sized bird into her love hole, then you’re probably really worse than what you claim you are.”

Like I always do, I’ll completely disregard your statement and instead, beg for your help. If you know of a place that would cost me nothing more than 20,000 pesos a month to own and is somewhere near the Ortigas area, please tell me about it. Seriously, this is important shit people.

Otherwise, don’t be surprised when you see me on the evening news in a courtroom being tried for the “alleged” murder of a bisaya couple in Fairview.

I spent a good time going over Apartment listings on Buy and Sell Plus this morning because, frankly, I cannot do this anymore. (Of course I’m not moving out, I mean if I move out of my parents’ place, who’d cook my food, launder my clothes and tell me everything’s going to be fine after I accidentally burn down a Sari-Sari Store? Looking made me feel better nonetheless.)

Here are a two reasons why Fairview sucks hairy balls:

1.) Stupid Fucking Bikes – I’m not talking about Ducatis either. I’m talking about those lame-ass, souped up Honda XRM’s with epilepsy lights and sound systems incessantly blaring Ja Rule, 50 cent or some shitty-ass bassy remixed song from the the late 90’s.

Every morning, one or two motorcycle gangs will descend on our street to a.) Eat breakfast at the eatery across my house and b.) Play annoying songs and rev their engines for a good five hours.
I fucking get it okay? You guys are cool and shit. You ride sweet bikes that couldn’t have cost you more than fifty thousand pesos. But guess what? I stopped riding bikes when I was twelve and accepted the fact that I have a penis the size of a wine cork with open arms. But if you guys want to hang out with a bunch of scrawny losers and chicks who look like they work at the shoes section of SM Fairview and rev your engines to prove that you are alpha males, then it’s cool.

I just want to tell you how I think that you guys are insecure about your sexuality and you probably have tiny penises. Also, I hope you all die.

2.) Stupid Fucking Bisayas. As if the stupid motorcycle gangs weren’t enough, I also have to live with the fact that about 90% of the homeowners on our street are fucking Bisayas. Now, I don’t have anything about Bisayas in general, I mean their women are hot; sure, they’re smelly, but they’re hot. And I love the dried, sugar-coated bananas they put in paper cones, but the Bisayas on my street are just annoyingly terrible.

They do nothing but angrily yap at each other and although I don’t understand Bisaya, I’m pretty sure their conversations go something like this:

Bisaya man: “I am hungry, where is that gross fish head stew we cooked and used to stink up the entire street last night? I think I’m going to reheat it and annoy the living piss out of our non-bisaya neighbors.”

Bisaya woman: “How the hell should I know? I’ve been sitting here on our doorstep, picking head lice off our daughter’s head the entire day.”

Bisaya man: “You are useless. But guess what? I still want to make like 400 babies with you so I can ascertain that we have enough Bisayas in the world to annoy the shit out of the next generation. Now, excuse me while I stink up the entire street again with my fish stew.”

Bisaya woman: “[not paying attention, picking head lice off daughter's head, looking at their malnourished dog with a "you're next" look in her eyes]”

So yes, I’m done. I can’t wait to pay thirty thousand pesos a month for a tiny condo unit along EDSA. I’m positive that I’ll have a grand time living there, until the good people over at the Bank of the Philippine Islands (who’d probably team up with the people from HSBC) show up at my doorstep one day with knives and baseball bats to “collect.”

What an awesome life. Now excuse me while I go out and do the only thing I know to alleviate my frustrations: And that is to drink myself to a point where I could no longer recognize basic shapes and colors.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Depression

Most of the time, I’m really not sure of anything. I am sure of one thing though: I will have a fucking emotional breakdown in about two days’ time. This is inevitable and I’m pretty much resigned to my fate. I don’t know if I told you guys already, but my psychiatrist decided to cut my anti-depressant and Xanax scripts by half.

Now, I find myself struggling with intense bouts of depression and horribly vivid dreams–dreams which are either extremely terrifying or extremely erotic (these I don’t mind at all). All of these might be just a case of Seasonal Affective Disorder something which isn’t new to me, but I decided to call my shrink anyway just to be sure(and maybe coerce her into writing me new Xanax scripts or something).

But because, like God, my shrink hates me, instead of prescribing more pills, she just went ahead and told me to “Go talk to somebody about it” since she says it just might be work-related stress.

Are you fucking kidding me? What’s so stressful about my work? The two hours I spend on managing my fantasy NBA team? The three hours I spend making personal phone calls to my friends? Or maybe it’s the four hours I spend listening to music everyday? God, give anyone a diploma and a lab coat and they act like they know everything.

I still think it’s Seasonal Affective Disorder. I mean, after all, every Christmas eve, I usually sob uncontrollably, pass out, wake up and realize that I wet my pants, then my slutbag cousin Ella would say something like “That was funny last year, now it’s just disgusting.” and I tell her “Well at least I don’t suck Bisaya cocks for weed money” and then she snaps back with something like “Yeah because you’re a fag, and you do it for free! (Because apparently, in my family, the fact that you never brought home a girl for dinner and the fact that you can speak straight English makes you gay)” Then my mom walks in on us having a fistfight and she cries because we ruined Christmas for her and the kitchen smells like urine.

So again, an emotional breakdown is imminent. I can see myself ungracefully leaving the glamorous world of internet marketing to pursue a life of severe self-discipline and abstention from all forms of indulgence. I’d probably travel the country on foot, haunting Gasoline station restrooms offering oral pleasure to weary travelers for a small fee of 10 pesos. An amount which I will promptly donate to my favorite charity.

THAT or I start picking people off with a sniper rifle from the top of a building in Cubao. If it goes down like this, I just want you to know that the innocent blood spilled would be on your hands Ms. Psychiatrist. Because you were too stupid to just prescribe more drugs to a patient who’s clearly an addict.

Lust

You guys remember The McDonald’s Drive-thru girl I sent an open letter to a couple of month’s ago?

Well I saw her yesterday in the same McDonald’s parking lot toking a cigarette with a guy who’s apparently her boyfriend(they were holding hands).

Well McDonald’s Drive-thru girl, I have nothing to say to you except: I wish you didn’t have a boyfriend. But since you do, I hope he dies. I know it’s mean for me to say that because it’s not like you said “I’d totally fuck you right now, but I have a boyfriend.”

If you had said that, I would most certainly be in the Quezon City Regional Trial Court right now awaiting arraignment for murder.

That is all.