Mother of invention

Every time we order from Nude Sushi, they always give us a buttload of soy sauce packets and disposable chopsticks, way more than we will ever need for a single meal. They sit, melancholy, unutilized in our utensils drawer.

[Tangent: are the objects SAD that they are not being used, or are they HAPPY that they get to live to see another day before being chopped up to a billion little bloody, screaming, tearful pieces by the monstrosities under the aegis of EBMUD?]

Of course, the chopsticks being an invention of the ancient Chinese, we figured that they could be very useful multi-taskers (the only uni-tasker in the kitchen is the fire extinguisher, according to Alton Brown, but what about the power stick hand blender?). To date, we have used disposable chopsticks for the following purposes, sometimes more than one in a single day:

-Unclogging the port into which we pour laundry detergent in our washing machine
-SRS using the chopsticks to break his poop in half so it could flush down the toilet because the log was too long, too solid, inserted into the toilet bowl at an unfortunate angle, and just too damn resilient to die without honor or glory
-Projectile weaponry

President Obama Will Hurt Me

I only went back home for 2.5 days for Spring Break. Every time someone calls me now and asks me if I want to hang out, I have to give the unfortunate reply, “Sorry, I’m already back in Berkeley,” inevitably followed by the angry or surprised response “What the fuck? WHY?” Here’s why: it’s all about efficiency. I always plan to see as many friends as possible in the shortest amount of time. I really have no other reason to be in town other than to see those who I am otherwise unable to see. The added benefit to this grand strategy is spending as little time at home as possible. Call me an asshole, but being stuck at home while taking one of my few precious breaks is not how I want to spend my time.

I also get to eat at all the places that I can’t go to because I have no car at school. I choose to spend my time eating terrible, terrible things for me, and somehow I block it all out of my head with some hand-waving and a simple “It’s okay, I only do this twice a year.”

After dining and wining at my cafeteria of choice, Fresh Choice (bad pun AND name-dropping = advertising $$$$ please!), I didn’t know what to do for the rest of the day, so I just hopped in my car and drove around until the winds of destiny brought my fat ass and my Asian Silver ‘93 Toyota Camry V6 XLE to the local googolplex. I rolled into the parking lot at around 3:00PM. Little did I know that I would end up staying until 11:30PM, my mind bursting full of Pokemon-esque flashing lights and mind-blowing speeches.

How was I able to stay so long, you ask? Because I do not fear the law. I can ravage the streets of Oakland in the dark of eve and whisk away the firstborn from every house, collect and bottle their tears, label said substance as precious, extremely rare morning dew collected from the highest canopies of Amazonian rainforests, and sell them at an extreme premium to stupid tourists, and the law wouldn’t be able to touch me with a 10-foot pole with an electric eel at the end. I’m that good. Like a FUCKING NINJA.

Just kidding; it’s because the folks at the theatre were too lazy to man their ticket collection stations. Nobody at the main entrance. Nobody at either side entrance to the auditoriums. Nothing.

I saw three movies in a row for the awesome price of $Free.99 (I hope it’s not taxable). I guess I’m not helping the economy any by keeping my money in my pockets, but hey, I ate at a restaurant and I bought gas in the damn San Francisco Bay Area. I think that’s plenty of compensation for the rest of the country, no? Of course it is.

Blasphemy

A loud conversation overheard at Starbucks:

A: "Hey! Good to see you!"
B: "You too! It's been so long since I last saw you."
A: "Sorry, I'm a bit forgetful - what's your major now?"
B: "I'm a history major, Middle Eastern Studies emphasis."
A: "That sounds really awesome!"

Time passes. I sip my coffee, reviewing some words for my GRE this coming Friday. Soon, my eyes glaze over as the prospect of taking an exam I will not be using anytime soon overwhelms me. I tune back in to the loud conversation next to me.

A: "I seem to recall you wanted to go to med school, right?"
B: "Yep. I'm still on track to go to medical school. I'm finishing up my prerequisites right now."
A: "Wait. You're still premed?"
B: "Yeah."
A: "But you're not a bio major."
B: "That's correct."
A: "...I don't understand."

I feel that way all the time.

Ghetto City by the Bay

No more frantic searching.

No more conversations with random people whom I met years ago with six degrees of separation away from me about a possible job opening.

No more sending out resumes and poorly-written cover letters.

I prayed to Tedford and the Great Oski in the Sky. They delivered.

I got a job with a small biotech company here in the Bay Area. And, damn it, I’m going to take it. There is no reason for me to consider other positions. The only leveraging factor is the pay scale – USC offered a little more money – but it’s not significant enough to tip the scales on this one. Unless something catastrophic happens, I expect to stay here with this position for the next two to three years.

I’ve also purchased my 2009 Cal football season tickets in the Young Alumni section.

Now all I have to do is stay awake long enough to finish my stupid lab report due 9am tomorrow before I can REALLY go on spring break.

I haven’t been this excited in a while.

A short thought before I get back to cramming

It's 2:14 AM on March 16, 2009. I'm studying for my last ever college midterm. A thought:

If I had a nickel for every time I heard or read the phrase "in this economy," I wouldn't have to worry about finding a job in this economy.

Also, I think this is my 100th post.

Story of my life

Seeing your professor, the one you actually enjoy listening to, at the gym: kind of awkward, but also kind of cool (oh snap, professors are human?)

Seeing your professor, the one you actually enjoy listening to, super sweaty and Full Monty in the men’s locker room after working out: FML.
---
Talking shit about the University of Southern California, the school you have loathed for the past four years, without discretion: cool, when done in mob form.

Talking shit about the University of Southern California, the school you have loathed for the past four years, without discretion after they offer you a job: I should probably stop here.

Blank blank-ity blank blank blank

When SRS and I came back to the apartment at about 1:00am, we turned on the TV and found ESPN2 showing a live broadcast of the Pool A first round of the World Baseball Classic this year. Normally, neither of us are baseball folks, but just as we were about to turn the channel, they announced the teams playing: Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) vs. Korea.

It was fate. It had to be fate, right? Two drunk guys with nothing to do, stumbling in at the wee hours of the morning, suddenly finding a game involving their very two countries, battling it out through the great American pastime?

The game went as expected – the Korean team blanked the Taiwanese team, 9-0. We were hoping that the Mercy Rule would be invoked so that we could finally get to bed, but nope, it just kept dragging on at 9-0 for a couple innings. (The Mercy Rule in the WBC is up by 15 by the 5th inning or up by 10 by the 7th inning.)

The best part about all this, other than the sheer surprise of circumstance, was the discovery that one of my favorite sporting accessories, the now-ubiquitous Thundersticks, were invented by the Koreans.

Thundersticks, for the uninitiated or the deaf, are long, narrow plastic balloons that are filled with a LOT of air to make them as solid as possible. They make a surprising amount of noise when you bang then together lengthwise, and they can be deafening when tens of thousands of fans clap their Thundersticks together.

There weren’t many fans in attendance, but then again, the Tokyo Dome is pretty difficult to fill to capacity. Of course, ESPN being the good network that it is, always shows some enthusiastic or interesting fans. It showed the Korean fan contingent being all coordinated with their matching uniforms and light blue Thundersticks and their little slutty cheerleaders with their little slutty dresses and their team being all not jealous of the other team.

Then it panned to the Taiwanese fans, a group much more sparse and much less coordinated in terms of appearance and active cheering. They did, however, focus on a shot on a happy Taiwanese family, a set of parents with two happy infant girls.

Here comes the asshole comment of the day. You should have a glass of water ready at hand. You should also have some paper towels nearby.

SRS: “Too bad your fans aren’t awesome and don’t have Thundersticks.”
Me: “I wonder how well it would work if that mother slammed her two babies together repeatedly. That’s gotta be pretty distracting, right?”

Listen, my children, and ye shall hear

I’ve been to quite a few excellent celebrations commemorating the twenty-first year of life of several close friends. During the beginning of my third year in college, I started thinking about what I wanted to do for my own 21st birthday and how to top all those other little shits and make it the BEST BIRTHDAY EVAAAR GOLD STAR! Several really half-baked ideas popped into my mind – get wasted and go to Chuck E. Cheese’s (sheer irony of celebrating the legalization of alcohol imbibement at an annoying, dirty chidren’s playground that serves really crappy food), get wasted at Dave & Buster’s (the slightly less stupid idea), going out for a nice dinner with a large group of close friends and then getting shitfaced at local bars (Plan A Priority Alpha or whatever the hell the military calls it) – the list goes on. I could go all day.

Something you may not know about me is that I love the radio program This American Life. Something you may also not know is why I interrupted this riveting, sweat-busting story with such an inane detail. Calm down, sir, keep your pants on, I’ll explain: the TAL show broadcast on 2/20/09 was called “Plan B.” It was about people whose lives didn’t exactly go the way they had planned it when they were younger and how they dealt with it or how, through perseverance and a little luck, they wound back on Plan A. I’m putting my thoughts down now regarding my 21st birthday because I just listened to it on podcast (I’m usually a couple weeks late, and don’t say “that’s what she said”) and felt that, though my story is nowhere near as grand or long-term as the broadcast ones, this one was befitting of a Plan B backroads blueprint. To make it more interesting, let’s switch up formats. WONDER TWINS POWERS ACTIVATE! FORM OF…SHITTY NOVELIST FEATURED ON OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB:

The alarm on my cell phone went off at precisely 8:30AM. The chorus of Dave Matthews Band’s “The Space Between” rang annoyingly next to my head. My worthless roommate was still passed out on his bed, undoubtedly having stayed up all night playing WoW or DotA or whatever stupid online game he beat off to. I got up, partially excited that I was starting a new project in lab, but mostly despondent that I was still stuck in this city that I so loathe. I looked out the window.

Los Angeles. For The City of Angels, it sure was pretty gloomy – the sky was once again tainted with the rust-red cummerbund that sorrowfully separated sky and earth. I told myself that I would only have to deal with a little over one more month of this bullshit, got dressed, and hopped in the shower. The cool water woke me, and at that moment, I let out a little muffled scream in the shower stall because, damn it, today was MY BIRTHDAY and nobody was going to stop me from having the time of my life. Nobody, except for the city of Los Angeles [grammar fail].

This was my route to work every day:

View Larger Map

It doesn’t look like the distance is that far from this zoom, but you can’t see all the goddamn hills to the west of campus that I had to painstakingly traverse in order to get to my lab. I remember it was particularly warm that day, especially considering the thick smog present.

I went to work as usual. There was nothing different about the lab – the folks were all the same, my project was pretty much the same stuff as last time but with more tedious protocols to follow, and nothing was out of the ordinary. I didn’t want to express that it was my birthday because I didn’t really want the fake attention they would have undoubtedly showered upon me. That was one of the aspects of the lab dynamic that I enjoyed but also loathed – they were friendly, but sometimes I questioned whether or not it was genuine (go figure, it’s LA).

I quietly worked away for a few hours, all the meanwhile thinking about what I actually wanted to do for my birthday. I had no friends in the immediate vicinity, I had some pocket money to spend – why not just go to a couple of the local bars and get piss drunk and stumble home by myself? That seemed like a good idea.

Then reality hit. I was going to spend one of my lifetime landmarks alone in an unfamiliar city with strangers I didn’t particularly like. I put down my P200, sat in my chair, and thought about if that’s what I really wanted. I decided against it and made a couple of calls.

Tint picked up immediately. He was in Irvine, his hometown, and somehow we convinced each other that he and KNak would drive up together to come celebrate my birthday in Westwood. I eagerly waited their arrival while mindlessly finishing up my last bit of cell culture preparations.

6:00PM showed on my clock, and The Call came in. I packed up, hurried downstairs, and met Tint and KNak, ready to party the night away like Duff Man had just burst through the door. The problem was that KNak was not yet 21. This was a big problem for the rest of us. We walked around Westwood Village, thinking of what we could possibly do that could include this little not-yet-21-year-old-bitch hunkering our epic plans.

We walked past California Pizza Kitchen on the corner of Broxton and Weyburn. Why not? It’s as good as any of the other overpriced chains around here.

We walked in, sat down, and immediately began perusing the beverages menu. Not a huge selection, but a Sam Adams will do.

“ID, sir?”
Tint: “CHECK HIS AGE.”
”Thank you, sir. Your order is coming right up.”
Tint: “…did he notice that it’s your birthday?”

Thus went my very first ID check. Lacking.

“I’m sorry, sir, we’re out of Sam Adams.”
”Uhh…guess I’ll go with a Budweiser then.”

KNak and Tint: “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU. WE’RE BUYING YOU A DRINK. WHY WOULD YOU DOWNGRADE TO A PUSSY BEER LIKE THAT.”
Me: “SHUT UP, it’s not my fault! I’ll make up for it later.”

We ate and drank and ate some more. Just as we were about ready to leave, I made a note to the other two that I was rather unsatisfied with the amount of alcohol thus consumed. Once again, we sat around The War Table and decided what to drink.

Me: “I’ll get a Long Island Iced Tea. That should make up for it.”

Sure enough, the evening was finally starting to spin around like stars. Just for kicks, I thought I’d finish top off the meal with something that really caught my eye earlier.

"Sir, I’ll have a Peach Breeze please.”
Tint and KNak: “I FUCKING HATE YOU WHY ARE YOU SUCH A VAG”
Me: “I WILL DRINK WHATEVER I WANNA DRINK FUCK YOU GUYS”

I finished off the Peach Breeze with relative ease (which I guess is a sure sign of a vag drink). We left the restaurant and thought about what to do next. One discussion led to another, and somehow we made it over to Ralph’s on Le Conte where I purchased my very first bottle of alcohol from a grocery. We somehow landed on Malibu and a carton of orange juice.

Derrick called somebody. “Hello? Are you home? …Oh, you’re busy? Like, really busy? …Yeah, I’m here celebrating a friend’s birthday. Can we come over to play Rock Band?”

And thus went the remainder of the evening: in a dorm room of someone I did not know at all playing on a broken Rock Band set and shooting Malibu and OJ every few minutes. Not how I had expected the day to go, but a funny alternative nonetheless.

Happy 21st, buddy. One hell of a Plan B.

END OF “PLAN B,” A SHITTY NOVEL BY GORDO

Recent polls suggest that Americans are getting too lazy to actually read and instead prefer quick, visual summaries or sound bites (Time Magazine certainly has changed their format to fit this growing demographic). Therefore, I have decided to include the following summary to best express how my 21st birthday went.

PLUS

EQUALS

KNAK

Refusal to break promises

I promised myself that, unless it was absolutely an emergency or work-related, that I would never wake up before 10am on a Saturday ever again.

Thanks to my sterling character, I successfully kept that promise by sleeping through ESPN College Gameday, which started at 6am.

I really wanted to go, and I had set my alarm for 4:30am so I could get up, get to BRH by 5am, and be ready to go. And I DID wake up at 4:30am, as I had wished.

However, I also unfortunately fell back asleep and didn’t wake again until 11:30, thus missing College Gameday entirely. And based on some of the stories I’ve heard, I missed out on some pretty good stuff.

BUT! I got my chance to make fun of Bob Knight anyway. Sleep AND ridiculing TV personalities that I personally don’t like? That’s called a “win-win” in Gordoland.