I have spent a great deal of time observing young college girls. Before I was married (and before the court legally prohibited me to. As it turns out, “accidentally” looking at a girl through her bed room window is a criminal offense. Especially if it involves a tree and a pair of binoculars) doing so gave me, to some extent, carnal satisfaction; nowadays though, my observations lead to genuine, unadulterated fascination. However, said fascination is fleeting and usually becomes pure, searing annoyance in a span of 5 short minutes.

For a long time, I’ve failed to put a finger on what exactly it is about younger girls that annoys the living shit out of me but I think I finally figured it out. And girls, I know you probably think you’re being cute, but the shit below? It needs to stop.

Inordinate use of the phrases “Oh My God!” and “I’m going to die!”

If you’ve ever spent a fair amount of time in a Starbucks on a weeknight you will–invariably so–encounter a group of young girls who are dressed up like they’re going a party or something but never end up leaving. Instead, in the god-awfully long time spend in the coffee shop, they skank up the place(which I don’t have a problem with) talk loudly about who their favorite American Idol contestants are, what the best dates are for them and their “girlfrans” to hit “bora” and how they’re “going to die” if they don’t watch the Anberlin concert. Let me illustrate:

Girl 1: Oh my God! did you see American idol last night?
Girl 2: Oh my God, yes! Did you?
Girl 1: Oh my God yeah! I loved Pia’s performance, it’s like she’s a star!
Girl 2: I know right! But hey did you see Lauren’s hair?
Girl 1: Oh my God! It’s gorgeous! I love her curls! She’s like not my favorite favorite and she doesn’t, like have that powerful of a voice but oh my God! I’m going to die if they cut her!
Girl 2: Oh my God! I know, I’m like going to die too!
Girl 1: [Stops sucking on her lollipop and takes a sip of her drink] Oh my God, wait lang girl, CR lang ako

…

Me: [cutting my wrists with a butter knife]

10 minutes after

[Girl 3 walks in]

Girl 1 and Girl 2: Stacey!!
Girl 3: Oh my God! I miss you!
Girl 1: Oh my God, you look so good!
Girl 2: Oo nga, Oh my God you’re blooming, what are you using on your face?
Girl 3: la langz!
Girl 1: Anyway, Oh my God, we’re going to bora on saturday!
Girl 2: Oo nga, I’m going to die! I haven’t gone shopping yet!
Girl 3: Oh my God, let’s go shopping, now na!
Girls 1, 2 and 3: Forever 21!!! (with the “one” part sort of lingering on like “ooooonnneeeeeeee”)

Me: [Walks out, knocks over a table on my way out. Kicks a stray cat. Also, the cat dies.]

Okay, here’s what’s wrong here: Saying “Oh my God” once in a while as an expletive is okay and even cute to some extent. But when you use it on every sentence that comes out of your mouths, it stops being cute and becomes annoying. Not to mention it confuses us guys who silently observe you from afar.

I mean you have no idea how quickly our minds can go from “I would totally Elmer her Fudd and Pepe her LePew” one moment to “I wonder how many seconds will it take her to bleed out after I lunge at her and drive this spoon through her neck” the next. It confuses our minds and our penises!

Another thing is this little thing called intonation. I know you’re all trying to sound sophisticated by speaking English when it is clearly not your first language. It’s cute and all but you’re forgetting this little thing called intonation. Your sentences don’t have to sound interrogative all the fucking time. Sentences that convey a simple assertion should begin with a medium pitch and end with a lower one. (i.e. “She doesn’t have a powerful voice”). So don’t end with a rising intonation because a.) You’re NOT asking a question and b.) It makes you sound like a bimbo.

Lastly, you’re NOT going to die so don’t say you are. And no, missing the Taylor Swift concert will not cause you to “die” nor would not having enough time to buy new swimwear for your next trip to “Bora”

I understand that this might be a difficult thing to understand to some of you so I created a simple chart to help you out:

It tells everyone that you’re done laying down the foundations of your new life on layers upon layers of financially-stable granite. Hell, you just purchased a home for you and your wife–a home that you’d pay mortgage for for years to come–why not purchase a ~PhP 900,000 vehicle that would put you in even more debt to top it all off?

My friends, that is the plan

I am not going to bore you with details of how I couldn’t afford it and how I’m planning to add to the already diverse list of jobs I do to make ends meet–a list that range from Internet Marketing Professional to Work from home telephone doctor/craigslist scammer–to make me afford it. (Mr. Ellingsworth from North Dakota, if you’re reading this, your “girlfriend” “Samantha” is still waiting for you to wire her the money you promised to lend her for her to  be able to get the ball rolling on the silk undergarment business you and her talked about)

I won’t because there’s a far bigger problem I’m faced with: I’m having severe anxiety attacks just thinking about selling my current car, a ’99 Honda Civic LX. The proceeds from the sale of my current car along with some of the money I have saved in the bank will pay for half of the new car I am planning to get.

The thought alone makes me tear up. I mean, who wouldn’t? Selling a car you’ve had for over almost a decade is kind of like taking your dog to the vet to be put to sleep. Sure, if my car was a dog it’d probably look like one of those fucked up fighting dogs with no hair and a missing eye, but it’s still the dog I went on many an adventure with. It’s my dog.

Indeed, my current car and I have been through a lot.

I remember all sorts of fun, messed up shit we went through together. Like that one semester in college when I lost the money I was supposed to pay my tuition fees with to a kid with an amputated left hand in a high-stakes Tekken game; I was in this car when I picked up a Japanese tourist from Ermita and gave him a [Sexual content involving the word "face babies" redacted upon request by the wife] in exchange for PhP 15,000 and a bag of champoy-tasting Japanese confections.

I was in this car when I came home from a night of wild partying and woke up half naked and later on realizing that I somehow thought it was a good idea to take off my shirt, take a dump on it, wrap it and make it “sit” on the passenger seat (I swear to God, I even secured “Warren Worthington the Turd” with a seatbelt). Fun times.

Or that time when cops randomly stopped me at a checkpoint and insisted that I must have drugs on me because, according to them, I look like a Chinese John Regala. They had me sit down on the curb while they searched my car. I got bored so, trying to be funny, I pretended to reach for something in my pocket and proceeded to shoot them with a gun finger. Not only didn’t they find my “joke” funny, I also got pistol whipped on the back of my head. They eventually let me go but not before one of them bought me a Cornetto from a nearby convenience store because I wouldn’t stop crying and whipping out my bird referring to it as “the .22 special I would’ve pulled if I really wanted things to get real”

The car they searched? Yep, it was this car.

So yeah, it’s going to be really hard letting go, but I will take a double dose of cowboy the fuck up and do what I have to do. But not before, as a final farewell, I write this poem on a piece of paper with green Crayola and tape it discreetly somewhere inside my old bud’s glove compartment:

Don’t be sad, I’ll be free from pain,
Never to be ill ever again,
I know you’ll miss me being there,
But all the memories you have to share.

Thankyou for being my best friend,
And all my needs that you did tend,
Try not to be sad, try not to cry,
Now’s the time to say GOODBYE.

..

What does a guy need to do to get a hug around here?

His argument is that in order to come up with a truly innovative business model, business strategists shouldn’t be afraid to throw in ideas from way out in the left field. Otherwise, you’d end up processing contaminated information using data you already know and come up with the same shitty business idea hundreds of people already came up with years before it even crossed your mind. (i.e. “That buffalo wings place around the corner is doing well, why don’t we put up our own buffalo wings place. Only ours is cheaper. And has more sauce. Bitches love sauce”)

It’s similar to the entire concept of the curse of knowledge popularized by Chip and Dan Heath in their book Made to Stick (another totally boss book).

I love it even more because the ideas Luke present are parallel to the ideas Sir Ken Robinson presented in his TED talk about how our educational systems undermine creativity as opposed to nourishing them.

Essentially the book teaches you to identify opportunities by addressing “tension points” and following a simple template:

There’s an opportunity to provide [who?] with [what?] that [fills what gap?] and coming up with a hypothesis to challenge an existing business cliche from way out in the left field.

A real-world example can be seen in the resounding success of the Nintendo Wii in a playing field supposedly dominated by the XBOX 360 and the Playstation 3:

Cliche: Gamers are lazy couch potatoes who do not want to move more than they have to while enjoying games with kickass, realistic graphics.

Disruptive Hypothesis: What if there’s a significant segment of gamers who would enjoy  laid back games with their friends using an unorthodox input system that would require them to get off their couch and move?

Insight: Some casual gamers are actually intimidated by realistic graphics and complicated controls.

Opportunity: There’s an opportunity to provide casual gamers intimidated by current generation games with a gaming console offering laid back games which they can play with their friends using a motion controller.

Again, this book contains a lot of valuable insights. Insights which, if I were aware of about the time I graduated college, might’ve given me a shortcut to the financial empire I am going for. Obviously, the path I took (one that involved a call center job and dancing half-naked in front of a clothing store in exchange for vegetables) was the longer route.

But, as my mom used to say: “Gumising ka na, hindi ka hihintayin ng pari. Naglasing ka nanaman ba?” (The rough equivalent of which in English is: “It’s never too late”.)

Using my learnings from this book, I came up with an airtight business idea that would undoubtedly propel me to within striking distance of the financial empire I’ve been longing to build. And maybe a couple of lawsuits. (Whatever. Again, like my mom used to say–never mind. Too much effort).

Business Idea: Brothel 2.0™

Cliche: Men would pay good money to pay prostitutes in brothels to satisfy their carnal desires. (Never go to brothels to satisfy your emotional desires. I swear, my friend Jerry fell “inlove” with a prostitute and made her his girlfriend. Bro got into so much debt, he is now awaiting arraignment from the Quezon City regional trial court for Grand larceny and estafa. Do NOT do this.)

Disruptive Hypothesis: What if some men would rather go to brothels to get paid by prostitutes to have sex with them?

Insight: some prostitutes would have sex with some men for free if they are good-looking enough.

Opportunity: There’s an opportunity to provide men with free sex by salaried prostitutes. The only requirement that patrons need to satisfy is that they should buy at least PhP 5,000 worth of douchebaggy clothing/perfume/hair product from the brothel’s store.

Men get “free” sex by looking good. Prostitutes “pay” the men from a small piece of the brothel’s profit from the mandatory clothing purchase. As an added bonus, patrons walk away with fashion articles they can reuse. Everyone’s happy and we gots 99 problems but a bitch aint one of them!

I know this idea needs a little polishing but hey, that’s where you, my friends/potential business partners/angel investors come in.

I’m just going to leave this link to my contact form right here.

This month saw a bunch of celebrities making comebacks of sorts. The Rock has come back to the WWE, and David Pomeranz and Stephen Bishop also made localized, annual Valentine’s day comebacks

(seriously guys, why leave when you can stay and land gigs co-hosting Sunday noontime shows singing Lady GaGa covers with local celebrities and live like kings? We love you guys! Also, you have no idea how many guys have gotten restroom prom beejes thanks to your songs but whatever right)

What many of you don’t know, however, is that crying somewhere in the heart of Pasig, another former, overweight (The proper medical term for which, as I learned from my company’s recent Annual Physical Examination by the way is “Obese Class III”)celebrity has been plotting his return.

The former celebrity I speak of is none other than myself. Mike Villar, Rising Washed-up Internet Star.

“Why return now? lol and where have you been?” You might be asking yourself. And the answer to your question is because I want to and because I can. So you better check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Where I’ve been? Nowhere really. Most of my time between my last post and now was spent chilling in the barren, cold abyss that is called “being married” subsisting mainly on depression sandwiches and an endless supply of human tears on tap.

I kid! What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been happily married for over a year now and, for those of you who aren’t married yet, the most important thing you need to know is that for most people, deciding to, how does Beyonce put it?  ”put a ring on it”, means biting the bullet as far as all the responsibilities of adulthood would go. This means you’ll have less free time and the little free time you have won’t be spent dicking around in the internet but rather accepting additional jobs so you could pay the utilities and afford those fine decorative balusters you want for your house.

That said, there will be plenty of changes in regards to this blog’s content. Long-time readers of this blog would probably get turned off but come on guys, you have to admit that penis jokes could only be stretched so far. (There are still going to be penis jokes. Albeit, more refined penis jokes. Did you honestly think I could stay away from penis jokes? I love penises!)

To illustrate:

Mikey from 2 years ago: Will write about how he got so messed up at a party that he spat on the host’s Shih Tzu after he got into an argument with it about who the hotter Community girl is: Britta or Annie. Obviously, the answer is Annie because she can be the most adorable thing without being sexualized. You don’t intimidate me with your barking. There’s a perfectly good reason why your kind is the one being bought from stores to keep our kind company. Hell, we put leashes on you and shit. Oh yeah? Come at me then! And put some fucking pants on!

Mikey now: Won’t even dare touch alcohol because the last time he did, the wife caught him peeing in the sink and he ended up sleeping in the car parked in a Shell Station somewhere on C-5.

Mikey from 2 years ago: Will write a poignant, humorous piece that throws jabs at the entire local blogging paradigm and how everyone has “sold out”

Mikey now: Doesn’t care. He’d rather spend his free time during work days catching up on videogames (yes, the wife allows me to play videogames during work days. Provided I wear a shirt while I do)

Mikey from 2 years ago: Will write a gonzo-styled post about how he made a bad financial decision and how he plans to deal with it.

Mikey now: has made all the bad financial decisions he can possibly make. In fact, I park the car in a lot a few blocks away from my house because I fear that the repo man will come to take it away at night while I sleep. (Seriously, you’d think that these guys would let up after you give them a promissory note outlining how you’d pay off your arrears and promising them you won’t have your uncle hide the car in ilocos while you “figure things out” like last time)

So here’s where I am right now. I come to you with my hat in my hand begging you for a second chance. Think of me as the ex-girlfriend you broke up with years ago who’s now trying to win you back. Her body might not be as banging as it used to (5 pregnancies and a hormone imbalance does weird shit to your body), and your bros might be constantly telling you how “you had her at her prime”, but can you look me in the eye and tell me that you won’t hook up with that and squeeze a beej or two from her? For old time’s sake? Exactly.

Mikey from 2 years ago: Will write about how tiny his bird is and how he never gets to use it

Mikey now: Will still write about the same. Sadly.

Welcome me back? Babe?

This morning, I woke up in a residential condo unit in the Pasig area next to a woman whom I later identified as Maffy, my best friend/love of my life who I publicly announced my engagement to a couple of months ago–or was it? I honestly don’t know. If you ask me what the date is, I’d say it’s mid October, 2009 because that’s what it feels like and apparently, that’s about the last time I was cognizant of anything.

Between then and now, I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened to me. I have vague, fragmented memories that, when pieced together, does not form a cohesive story, let alone one that makes sense. Let me run these memories by you guys and hopefully, you can help me make sense of them:

Memory fragment 1: I’m married?!

This really doesn’t come much of a surprise to me as I know for a fact that I am engaged before I fell into the entire time warp shit I was in. But, it appears that I’ve now been married for three months. I found this photo while rummaging through iPhoto:

Based on this picture, the following people were in my wedding:

• Peter Juan
• Liz Lanuzo
• Lauren Dado
• TJ Cafuir
• Elymar Apao
• Jayvee Fernandez
• Rey Agapito
• Alvin Jimenez
• Luis Buenaventura
• Anne Gomez
• Noelle De Guzman
• Rico Mossesgeld
• Penny Monasterial
• The guy who played Mr. Peabody in Problem Child

I’m pretty sure I invited Pau to my wedding and even considered making him one of my secondary sponsors but, according to this picture, he didn’t make it. This is probably due to the long-standing family feud between my family and his that stemmed from a disputed hectare of land in Pangasinan. So Pau, I just want to say that it’s cool and, morally, you are obliged to share all the gold you find in that land seeing that I found it remember? During that time you and I were playing hide and seek with my lesbian leprechaun friend named Vangie? Okay?

I’m pretty sure I invited Marc too as I was considering him to be one of my groom’s men. I better find out what happened there. In fact, I better check and see if I even have a job.

So yeah, that’s totally boss and crazy weird at the same time. Boss because it feels like I didn’t have to go through all the stress usually associated with wedd–hold on, I think another memory is popping up…

Memory fragment 2: The 10% rule is bullshit

This is not so much a memory as it is knowledge. For some reason, I now know that when anyone says that 10% of the guests you invite to your wedding are not gonna show up, they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. I remember inviting 150 guests with the 10% rule in mind when the wife and I were doing the final reservation with the caterer and we ended up with 160 people attending the reception.

Don’t get me wrong, this turnout is great and I appreciate all your support, but the question that begs to be answered is: How can we have 110 people attending the actual ceremony and host 160 people in the reception? Where the fuck were the rest of you guys during the wedding ceremony? Come on!

Memory Fragment 3: I can now speak/write russian

Пища, с которой многие дорогие и лучше, чем мастурбация

Memory fragment 4: resourcefulness under duress

Because of the snafu caused by believing the 10% rule, I now know that some people will eat anything regardless of how questionable. So yeah, if the food you ate on my wedding tasted like shredded Chicken Joy topped with copious amounts of Karo Syrup and cigarette ash, that’s probably because it is. I had to have food delivered because some of you don’t know how to RSVP.

Memory fragment 5: Women (especially if they’re your wife) want you to lift the toilet seat when you take a piss but don’t want you to leave it up because, apparently, there are germs on the toilet seat so they can’t touch it but you, being a man and immune to germs, can.

I would expound on this memory if it weren’t too soon (got in a fight with the wife earlier about this one). But hey! The good news is that I’m back! And it looks like even if I blacked out or whatever, it looks like I am living an okay life. For the most part. I don’t see the point in going back in time to reliv–

thirty, flirty and thriving…thirty, flirty and thriving…thirty, flirty and thriving….thirty, flirty and thriving… WORK DAMMIT!

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.