Your Way Out: Solution in 3 Shades of Awesome
It’s
the big day. You have prepared for the presentation with everything you could arm yourself with: corroborating documentations, related statistical information, facts-facts-and-more-facts, a thumbs up from your immediate boss, a well made powerpoint presentation with graphs and hyper-links, and, most importantly, a good night's sleep. You say to yourself, "
this is it," and that nothing else could possibly go wrong. You propel yourself into the boardroom with more confidence than what most TV personalities have while in front of a camera during an international live airing of the single most will-be watched coverage of something with global relevance and importance.
You wait. Five minutes 'til shake and bake.
Standing in front of your audience, you stare at 10 of top brass executives occupying the highest positions in your company. It is after all a proposal your subsidiary's New York Head Office have taken a liking on the moment you first presented the revolutionarily sound business solution via electronic mail. That's a two-level promotion in the bag once your 30-minute-tops talk is done.
Time flies when you enjoy what you do. Your talk is soon over and you open the floor to Q&A. The AVP for Finance clears his throat and you acknowledge him by nodding in his direction. He mumbles something expected and, God, you are so prepared for it. You formulate the single, best, most eloquent sentence construction of this deal-closing answer you have inside your head. You say, “
Thank you,” followed by a brief pause, preparing your audience for something they would definitely blow their brains out the moment words of refined precision start flowing out and through your authoritative chops.
Then, it happens.
You involuntarily twitch the instant you felt the solid, burning sensation on your testicular area. Something is biting and it doesn’t have plans of stopping any time soon. You have the tendency to scratch but thought better. You can NOT do anything. Instead, you prolong the awkward silence, muster a gasp, bite your inner lower lip to prevent yourself from groaning, all the while fighting a lone solitary tear from rolling off the side of your eye and down your cheek. The discomfort leaves you paralyzed, agitated, and out of focus. Since you can't even brush the side of your palms over your groins to at least alleviate your discomfort, the wretched spawn of the devil keeps on hanging on to biting your nuts like your flesh is some divine manna. You picture it shaking its head in conviction as it chews on you. It then makes a sound of angst and triumph, inaudible to human ears, that when translated could well be "
FOR. THE. QUEEEEEEEN!"
I watch you from the vantage of your audience. Since I know nothing of your sorry predicament, a conclusion shapes itself inside my head. “
This is a waste of my time.”
This scenario is not that far fetched. In fact, it could happen to anybody, either with or without balls, in whatever age, career, or ethnicity. What may seem like a dead end to your smoothness is still redeemable if you follow these simple fail-safe steps.
You politely excuse yourself from your audience by declaring a five-minute rest period as you walk towards your immediate superior. You tell your boss to take over the discussion one minute, should there be any offhand questions from the group, while you run off to get an important file from your work station. You exit, close the door behind you and you rush to the nearest restroom, into the nearest unoccupied cubicle, not wasting any time to unfasten your belt, pants, and boxers with a single yank.
What you do next is up to you but here are several awesome options:
OPTION 1: The-Ordinary-yet-Awesome 
You bend over for a better view of your gems and you take the blasted ant off its reverie using your thumb and index finger, crushing its fragile body in the process. Not done with your revenge yet, you put its lifeless body over the tip of anything handy, like a ballpoint pen. You fish out your trusty lighter and let its bluish torch burn the abomination in front of you. You experience wave upon wave of bliss with every flicker, every burning sound, every manifestation of yellowish ember, and fast eventual charring of the sucker’s fragile armor. All is good.
OPTION 2: Death-by-Death-God Awesome 
You part your jewels to have a better view of the insect’s face. You will know its name, having traded your eyes with that of a Shinigami. You fish out your Death Note. You write its name down while remembering closely how the insect looked like. You then proceed to write down the elaborate “cause of death” you have crafted especially for it and only it within six minutes and forty seconds from the time you have written its name down. You write: it will be tortured in levels far beyond what beings its size would normally bear and undergo and it will die in the hands of another Shinigami’s Zanpaku-To’s Bankai. You then go into the details. Everything will happen within the next 5 minutes. You feel a chill as a paralyzing force suddenly envelopes everything. Yamamoto Genryuusai Shigekuni will arrive. He knows your predicament. He turns you around using nothing but his Reiatsu so he could have a better aim at the insect that’s still attached to your balls. You spin around, bound by something unseen, like a wrestler's grip, only more awesome. Without further ado, he chants "Banshou issai haijin to nase," or “reduce all to ash.” Everything feels weird. You suddenly feel heat all round you that grows in intensity by the second. In one blinding instant, a bright light flashes. Then everything is still. Next thing you know, the ant has burnt and charred together with a few of the tips of your wiry genital hair. The old man disappears and leaves you panting from unease. With only the smell of burnt pubes in the air, you become thankful and realize that all is still good.
OPTION 3: Help-from-Powerful-Women Awesome 
You wait until midnight. You wait for the right time because the awesomest of revenge is never rushed. You go online and search for Hell Girl’s site. Once there, you type in the name “Antoine,” or “Ant1” in ant-spell, in the site’s only blank field. Over it are the words, “we will exact your revenge.” A few moments later, Enma Ai appears and gives you a straw doll with a red string. She gives you a warning in her emotionless voice and expression, “Beware, two graves are dug when one seeks revenge.” What she means is she will take the victim’s soul to Hell if you agree that she will have to take yours, too, when you die. Blah, you pull the string anyway and the wheel of revenge starts to spin by the weaving of the gracious Enma Ai as she re-appears in front of your balls in the smallest of her imaginable form and says to the ant, “ippen shindemiru?” She goes into the victim’s mind, reminds it of its inhumane acts, and then Ran (Texhnolyze), Major Motoko Kusanagi (GITS), Flower Maiden (Wolf’s Rain), Dita (Chobits), Kagero (Basilisk), and Otonashi Saya (Blood+) suddenly appear from nowhere. They each hold on to an arm of the insect and they pull them out at the same time. With a shrill chorus of uproarus banter, the women disappear with a tiny limb each. Next, an army of dust mites swarm at the remains of the still living insect. Hell’s dust mites. A thousand times more vicious than the earthly dust mite. They bite and inject excruciating pain with a mere touch. In the end, Enma Ai takes the soul of the insect on a ferry to the gates of hell. She leaves you with a flame tattoo on your chest. Her mark of damnation.
You will not be awesome until the next day, but all is still good.
Which soever way you choose, it ends the same way.
You flick the unrecognizable remains of the lifeless bastard in the toilet. You flush it. As the water swirls in
Orinoco waves, you spit on it while muttering a triple bad karma inducing curse. Only then will you have finally avenged the future generations your loins will breed.
You massage your now-swollen sac and fix yourself, breathing normally now, albeit still uncomfortable. Somebody walks in the john to find you washing your face from the sink faucet and asks, “
everything OK?” You answer with a mutter that sure sounded like, "
Ass.”
He will walk towards the urinals as you exit the restroom. He will fish his member out of his pants and catch a whiff of something burnt in the air. Like the heady smell of smegma that he will only later that same day's night realize as his per his wife's nagging remark of disgust. He will wrinkle his nose and pay it no mind in a few seconds. After all, the long day ahead lined up with board meetings is at the top of his worries.
You regain your composure like a stud who just claimed a harem of 14 deprived concubines as you re-enter the boardroom.
You will rock. You will kick ass. You will succeed.
And you will have me to thank for it.
Bitch.
Labels: Anime, Humor, Man-Blog, Vertigo
A Friday Night "M Party"
I have said it before, Philip Morris, the makers of Marlboro, always throw the most kick-asstest of parties. The latest I had the opportunity to go to was just last Friday held in the new One Esplanade near the Mall of Asia at Roxas Boulevard. There's free flowing booze owing to Diageo's co-sponsorship of the event. A battalion of beautiful people scatter everywhere inside the venue. So many, that those in the nether regions might not have sighted a single beautiful person elsewhere that night.
Without further ado, I give you the "M Party" night in a capsule. A 3-minute video. Pictures I took are here (close contacts only, sorry. 40 photos in this collection).
Labels: Lifestyle, Party, Video
Kitsch from the distant past
Yes, I paint. Well, did. Until Freetime, the carefree kindred that she was, left me which was regretably my fault as I was eyeing this foxy chick, Career, right after college. I pursued Career and fell in love. I to her and she to me. One thing led to another and the bond between me and Freetime severed. I did not blame, nor scold, not get mad at her the moment she left. I made the choice and I understood why it was she felt she'd never be friends with the demanding Career. I made a vow to make amends with Freetime, whether she accepts or not. After all, it was only friendship and attention whe was after, nothing more. We'll catch up on lost times. We could spend some weekends or some late nights together like we did before. I'd like to see that happen. And soon. 'Cause she made me do one thing I felt good at doing. Paint.
In the old times, I'd paint shirts. The first I did had Sandman which I still wear in the house to this very day. Friends would give me a shirt and I'd return it to them with my kitsch-art. I did all these for free. Those were pre-digicam days so I never got to have photos of my art before I gave them out. What I'd give to get those even after all this time.
These photos have two of my creations from the distant past. They are my humble renditions of popular Vertigo comics characters as originally done by Duncan Fegreedo. The dude with the long do is Shade, the Changing Man. The gay masked guy is Enigma.
I made Shade for Chewie. She soaked the shirt in detergent soon after I gave the item to her and the top-coat separated itself from the metallic canvas-base. Got it back with a promise to return it to her once fixed. I never did and the shirt has long been with me.
Enigma was for Omar, aka Wolverine. He loved my comicbooks and we had some good times hunting down bargain buys from the shelves off Merriam Webster bookstores and far flung branches of Filbars. He had some Enigmas and so did I. He gave me his stash when he left for the suburbs. If you look closely, there are still tapes on the boarders of the painted portion of the shirt. I put them there to keep the paint from bleeding off the sides. I never finished this one either. It has been six years from when I started.
My paints have all dried up. My brushes have gone missing. I made a resolve to meet Freetime again and we'll become close and tight and good. I'll get me new paint-stuff then and, hopefully, I'll paint again.
More photos of these shirts through here.
Labels: Art, Vertigo
The Gathering: a First for the Author
I rent a small-ass place, a 2-storey apartment in the old residential area of Makati. For entertainment, I have this small, for-kitchen-sized, thirteen-glorious-inches of cathode-ray-transmitting cable-hooked TV that I won from a raffle last year. It is propped on a stand facing a decent living room with a couch and throw pillows. I have a dining table with chairs and a fairly workable kitchen with a space-saving single-burner stove, a small oven, and an array of other necessary kitchen stuff and utensils. The house is not something I could have people drop their jaws at in awe which is why I never considered inviting anybody over. Ever.
My dilemma started about a month ago when even I surprised myself on agreeing to host something for friends for a change-of-venue in the stead of our already sort-of-a-ritual drinking weekender in Cable Car along Pasay Road. Thing is, I wasn’t ready. Sure, I myself have been invited to intimate get-togethers in various friends’ houses to save my social life and own-home-party-hosting eventualities but I’m just not prepared for this huge leap in showing other people how independently kick-ass I am in managing it on my own so far. See, I have this fear of being judged and told that my idea and way of a sovereign lifestyle sucks. I mean, I had been living this way for so long and an in-my-face feedback about it being a sham could just be irreversibly unbearable for my deflated, albeit healthy-looking-because-I-am-a-good-actor-like-that, ego. I could pull off living like a slob owing to my younger-than-my-age appearance, with special commendations to the genes of my parentals’ lineage of immortals, but my would-be guests actually know my age and they have a hint of how much I earn (or so they think. Hah!) that I have no choice but shape up and get myself ready for what I foresee to be a momentous milestone in my version of a parody of a gloomorous life. Pun intended on the "gloom."
About a week before the event, I started considering what things to do and buy. Knowing the personalities of the people coming over, they'd be happy to just crash and have booze coupled with something to munch, or make that something to shove in their mouths at every fraction of a twelfth of an hour.
As to what to serve, good thing my good friend Ainna brought me lunch at the start of that same week and, after tasting her delectable pasta sauce, a flash of genius made me want to try replicating her easy-to-prepare, high-quality, gourmet Italian creation. That and sausages because everybody loves good sausages and Santi’s have just the thing to fulfill this aspect of my idea of a feast. I eventually planed on getting herbs, which will, from that fateful night onwards, be labeled "kick-ass herbs" after it brought them otherwise ordinary olive oil sautéed sausages to a god-like state in the sausage-dish preparation branch of culinary science. Also, button potatoes. And young corn and mushrooms.
Night came and the visitors arrive. Dawn rose and they're still there. Were it not for the cramped space and lack of sleeping areas, I'd have felt confident that they all had a great time. Up to now, I think they were just polite in saying they did.
Now that I'm experienced to this sort of hosting bit, I think I'll get a hang of the next time which I hope could be as or even more enjoyable than my first.
Labels: Lifestyle
The pseudo house drink-in
Here's a first: me inviting people over in my house for something other than the usual one-hight-stand (and I still wish I were promiscuous and lucky like that). Fuck, I think the food wasn't much and I felt the house didn't have enough of a moving space for eight people. Still, we were loud and, for once, I got to out-noise my jologs neighbors who, out of pure envy I think, also decided to have a party last night. On a bloody Sunday. Theirs lasted until about 2am. I could not help but hear them talking from my bedroom window and their convo made me feel so sorry for their lack of humor, wit, and smarts.
How I got to agree on having people over is something that's worth another entry. For now, here are the pictures. More of these here.
Labels: Lifestyle, Photography
