Let me explain: preparing for a wedding isn’t exactly cheap–to put things into perspective, let’s just say that in the last couple of months, I have spent half of what I earn annually booking some of the suppliers I need for my wedding.

All of this would’ve been fine If I was doing really well for myself. Well I could probably say that I sort of am but then again, let’s not forget that I am also paying for the house I bought early last year.

Add the fact that the actual preparations are taxing both mentally and emotionally into the mix and you’ve got yourself the perfect formula for an obese, manic-depressive train wreck waiting to happen. So stay the fuck clear.

Anyway, to cope with all the financial and emotional stress that are weighing heavily down on me, I’ve stepped up to take in more work and made it a point to drink myself into a coma every chance I get.

This becomes problematic when:

My Workaholism

In my wedding, I will be known to some people as the “sales pitbull” and the “douchebag screaming into his BlackBerry in English” to some. The thing is, with what I do, whenever I see a deal that needs closing, I attack it like a cheetah would attack a gazelle: Going for the lithe hind legs first before dragging the carcass back to my den for midnight snack and some necrophilic action.

My hunger for money nowadays is only dwarfed by my thirst for beer, so really, it’s only natural for me to be talking to Chinese internet moguls via my BlackBerry 24/7. If the guests in the wedding couldn’t understand the importance business and trade has in modern society, then I suggest they kick themselves back to 18th century France so they could listen to Rosseau tell them how awesome communism is and invite them to share their meager broth with him.

My Alcoholism

I cannot say this enough: I love to drink. You can blame my Ilocano genes or my dark past but the fact of the matter is I love alcohol okay? This insatiable thirst coupled an unlimited supply of booze afforded by the mobile bar I signed as one of the vendors for my wedding is a lethal combination. In my wedding, I would start off innocently enough, first swinging back the ceremonial glass of wine my future wife and I would share. Then I’ll knock back a few beers while going table to table for pictres. Then the wheels would come off–Somebody just handed me a Jaegerbomb!

Next thing I’ll remember is me putting my penis in the chocolate fondue. Another blackout. Then I’ll vaguely remember trying to rally everyone into dancing the Macarena on the dance floor. This will be followed by another blackout. Then it happens: The moment of true humiliation: I’m struggling to keep my balance on one foot holding a bottle of tequila before finally falling backwards into our wedding cake.

I wake up the next morning in a forest wearing an Igorot outfit hugging a rice cooker.

As we continue to celebrate Restroom McNinja Awesomery Month here at mikevillar.com [1][2], I would like to tell you this funny thing that happened to me last weekend. Also, I lied. there’s no such thing as Restroom McNinja Awesomery month. I just couldn’t think of a better intro. Let alone, a good segue from that horrible intro you just read to my main point. Maybe I could jus—

Last Saturday, I went out for drinks with a few friends from the office. Nothing weird or different there, maybe except for the fact that I was feeling a little under the weather and was in pretty bad shape for a self-proclaimed alcohologist who’s had only three bottles of beer at 10pm on a weekend.

The reason why I wasn’t feeling so good, I believe, was because I had one too many bottles of beer with the fiancee the night before and was a little hungover. It didn’t help that when I woke up that morning, I went through my hungover morning ritual that involves a furious, 15 minute masturbation session, leftover adobo, some pan de sal and a 1.5 liter bottle of soda. The sleep I had the night before was spasmodic and uncomfortable.

So yeah, to recap: prior to coming for work that day, I was already hungover, my stomach was fucked up and had close to zero sleep.

On top of that, the bar we went to was pretty thronged, hot and generally uncomfortable. If you know me, you’d know that my body does not take heat very well (Especially during the times I forget to stuff my armpits with table napkins. Man, you should really see those pit stains)

I remember being a little PO’d at that point in the evening. I started to feel nauseous because of the heat and, was sweating lke a Hyberabad man in a sauna that’s cranked up to 11.

When I get this uncomfortable, I usually stay in my little corner where I generally don’t talk to anyone, and drink my face off. But really, I didn’t want to ruin the evening for myself.

So, what I did to cope was go to the restroom periodically to splash my face with water and retouch (what, and you’re so manly?)

Now the bar only had two restrooms–one for men and one for the ladies situated right beside each other so people who are waiting in line to use them, whether they’re male or female are in the same line.

As I entered the male restroom during one of my trips, a middle-aged man went in with me much to the shock of the people who were waiting in line and my muted chagrin.

“Kid, can we like go at the same time? I can’t hold this in anymore?” He said.

“No shit? You’re already in here with me” I thought to myself but ended up saying “Sure! No problem” with the chipperness and pitch akin to that of a prepubescent schoolboy.

So we went. Together. He in the toilet, and I in the urinal.

Now, let’s move on to the lesson I learned through this whole ordeal before I end up saying things I don’t mean shall we?

The lesson is: Urinating back to back with a man twice your age as he talks to you about how the country’s president is a “no good, midget thief” all while grunting, moaning and establishing eye contact with you via a mirror  is a surprisingly pleasant experience every man should experience at least once in his lifetime.

Now aside from New Year’s eve, I pretty much have nothing else left to look forward to besides, probably, my yearly trip to the Far Eastern University Hospital’s emergency room sometime around my birthday March next year because I managed to imbibe a near-lethal cocktail of ground Xanax, Lexapro/Cymbalta, GSM blue and lighter fluid out of sheer depression.

However, like all young, management types like yours truly, I like to plan my year early to sort of hit the ground running come the start of next year.

That said, let me, Mike Villar: STILL Rising Internet Star, highlight the goals I’ve set for myself next year so that you, my readers, can, as reference, look back to this post next year and laugh at how I miserably failed at attaining each of them.

My first goal for 2009 would be:

Join the Gym. Again.

I’ve had my fair share of health scares this year; most of which had something to do with either my blood pressure or my panic disorder.

(However, because I know that there’s someone pretty high up at work itching to grant me a two-month “Medical leave” without pay or ask me for a certification that I am “fit to work”, I want it to go on record that the hospital has cleared me of any serious medical conditions and I am, in fact, healthy as a battleship.

So, if you’re afraid of me not being able to effectively discharge my duties because of any sort of medical condition, rest easy. Besides, they say that the worst thing that could happen is that I “snap”, pull a gun, take the old, eldritch lady who sells merienda hostage and demand some sort of “Rice Allowance” from management. You know, because rice is expensive nowadays.

Also, they said that there’s only a 40% chance of that happening. So I guess we’re all safe. For now.)

The problem is, recently, after paying for three months’ worth of gym membership and going maybe only once or twice in that period, I’m starting to get worried about my languishing physical state.

To give you an idea: I get fuck dizzy every time I stand up abruptly, I need two days to recuperate from a “successful” masturbation session (defines as when you successfully ejaculate semen past your head in a position where you masturbate sitting down), and climbing a flight of stairs can put me out of commission for at least seven hours.

Also, I know that, if I look hard enough, I’d be able to see my penis somewhere. But, as of the moment, I have to rely on the initial stream of urine shooting somewhere out of my underbelly like tracer rounds to avoid making a total mess in the bath room every time I pee.

I absolutely have ZERO expectations in rejoining the gym. I am a very realistic man and I know that there will never come a time when I will be able to run through a white beach on a marvelous summer day; the rays of the sun making the sweat on my perfectly-toned body glisten as my lady friend jumps into my capable, muscular arms.

In fact, a more probable fantasy is one of me stoned as fuck, running after a yellow elf through a Novaliches side street with a bottle of rhum in hand, pausing every twenty yards or so to take a swig and rest before finally giving up and collapsing out of sheer fatigue–but not before taking a bite off a jumbo bola-bola siopao I’ve had in my pocket all along.

So yes, I’ll probably, again spend money on something I will rarely, if never, use. Which is actually a good segue to my next resolution…

Save 700,000 bucks by the end of 2009

The start of 2008 pushed me to the pinnacle of my financial glory. At that time, I got a promotion at work which came with a considerably generous raise, I was doing most of my alcohol binging at my house or my friends’ house (mostly because the pills I have been taking for my generalized anxiety disorder might have caused an unforseen side effect–I developed severe paranoia, something which made me terrified of being caught in massive anthrax attack perpetrated by middle eastern terrorists.

Also, I had a “little” brush with the law involving a girl I dated two years ago. I mean come on, I never knew statutory rape was real. Nor did I know that the girl was 14 nor that the word “sophomore” printed on the back of the P.E. T-shirt she wore on our dates meant that she was on her second year. Of High school. So yeah, I had to lay low for a while because of that.)

But, nearly as soon as I got a stable financial foot hold, I decided to blow it all off on a condominium unit I could never possibly afford. Without getting too much into details, this decision is costing me at least 25,000 bucks a month.

The ridiculous mortgage would’ve be fine if I didn’t owe over a hundred thousand pesos to the credit card companies, something I decided to pay in full towards the latter part of the year.

The fact that gas prices went up to the high 50’s per liter mid this year didn’t help either.

Now, here’s where I stand. I’ve got zero monthly disposable income for the rest of 2009 and sadly, this has been the poorest I’ve been since right after I quit my first job. Now, I have resorted to posting pictures of myself with only an xbox controller strategically positioned to cover my genitals to a video game fetish forum for money.

So the 700,000 bucks goal? Don’t ask me. I don’t know either.

–

And there you have it, I only have two items on my new year’s resolutions list and the way I see it is that this post will serve as some sort of black box for you guys to examine for when the Mike Villar Zeppelin crashes into a gigantic mountain of fail sometime mid-2009.

Happy new year.

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.