Sunday, August 30, 2009

Mystery Science Theater 2009

My phone just cheerily gave a single beep that I had never heard, apparently reminding me that I had a saved voicemail that was about to expire. The problem: I don’t ever recall saving a voicemail, mostly because I NEVER save voicemails. I typically have my left thumb on 7 whenever I listen to voicemails to lay the smackdown on the pesky little messages as swiftly as possible. And yes, I also Archive my emails religiously. A clean Inbox is an efficient Inbox.

Wondering what on earth a saved voicemail was doing in my inbox, I hit 1 to listen and I heard a bunch of giggling and the following message TO MYSELF FROM MYSELF:

“So I’m with Hsiao and Stacy right now. Hsiao said, ‘You only visit once every couple weeks now! [I assume we were in Palo Alto.] Why don’t you come back more often?’ And I said, ‘Because I have to work. And…uh…go drinking with my friends afterward.’ Then Stacy…wait…no, HSIAO says, ‘You’re going to grow up to be a GREAT father.’ [High-pitched, depressed voice] ‘Daddy, why don’t you spend more time with me?’ [Deep, angry, cigar-and-whiskey-rific voice] ‘Because daddy has to WORK. And go DRINKING with his buddies afterward.’”

I have absolutely zero recollection of this event ever happening. I don’t know what we were doing or how this ever came up in conversation.

I love the little surprises that the gods throw at me. It lets me know that the powers above still care about me enough to make me look like a fool every once in a while.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

I was THIS close to being on The Price is Right.

Lessons in Chinese Culture, Lecture 2: the best things in life are free or heavily discounted.

This is why the Chinese absolutely obsesses over coupons and cream themselves every time they we can manage to save fifteen cents on a two-dollar can of soup (or bok choy or whatever the hell it is we buy). Never has “a penny saved is a penny earned” been truer for a fifth of the world’s population, especially in these perilous economic times. There are certain parts of This Glorious Nation of California where coupons are worth more than its weight in gold, where these sacred, poorly-printed slips of newspaper can buy you friends and earn you more enemies. You’d think that SF Chinatown would be the epicenter of this phenomenon, which is true to a certain local extent, but I argue that entire areas east of Los Angeles, such as Alhambra and San Gabriel, where billboards, street signs, and store signs are printed entirely and exclusively in Chinese, value these pennysavers the highest.

Of course, better than discounted foodstuffs and laundry detergent are giveaways, quality be damned. I went to a job fair on campus earlier this year for two main reasons: one, to find work, and two, to collect as many free toys and promotional items as possible. I have a whole little box of completely worthless crap from various companies who will probably never employ me in my lifetime, yet I relish the idea that I got these lead-painted, Made-in-China trinkets for FREE. All it cost me was a few dozen calories walking around the show floor, pretending I was interested in their company, and in some cases, literally grabbing and dashing. This is why I haven’t purchased a ballpoint pen in a while: elementary and middle school were served by the small hill of free pens given by pharmaceutical companies that my father had collected over the years; my high school years were served by a few extra pens that my sister had during her college years; the first couple years of college served by a couple of pens that I borrowed from classmates and entirely forgot to return (and they, in turn, forgot to request); and the last two years of college served by the large number of Cal Band Great pens sitting in the office. I am a whore, I know, what can I say, I was MIT ‘87 (that’s Made in Taiwan for you mainlanders and Mýllý Ýstýhbarat Teskýlati for you assholes wiretapping my phone and reading my e-mails. I’M TURKISH INTELLIGENCE TRAINED BRING IT ON).

Why do I bring up this lesson? One word: Caltopia. Billed as the “largest College Lifestyle Festival in the nation,” for the past seven years, this fair, adoringly referred to by many of us as FreeshitFest, has brought about tons of companies giving away free promos, advertisements, coupons, games, prizes, and free samples to get you hooked into what THEY think should comprise your College Lifestyle. Year after year, I go to Caltopia to eat breakfast/lunch, get stupid free crap, most of it useless, some it entertaining, rarely significant, and have a good time laughing about the interesting advertisement schemes that the companies come up with. “Two days of fun, food, music, & FREE STUFF! August 23 & 24 FREE ADMISSION!” is printed on the front of the Caltopia Event Guide, weighing in at 0.59 lbs. and proudly “printed by UC Printing Services on Recycled Paper with Soy Based Ink.” (I love you, Berkeley.) We didn’t stay for the entertainment – we made our own by spinning stupid wheels with crap prizes and throwing beanbags into holes of questionable size.

Notable features of this year’s Caltopia: the banks were advertising extremely aggressively this year. Wells Fargo had 12 representatives all holed up in one side booth while Bank of America was smack-dab in the middle of the entryway to the basketball courts (the main showroom). Wells Fargo had a spinwheel. Bank of America had Plinko. That’s right, America’s favorite game on America’s favorite daytime game show, The Price is Right, was at the Recreational Sports Facility at the University of California, Berkeley, and I didn’t play it because YOU BANKING ASSHOLES ARE PUSHING CUSTOMERS AWAY BY BEING SUPER AGGRESSIVE AND LITERALLY GRABBING US BY THE ARM BEGGING US TO BECOME CUSTOMERS and I didn’t want to get dragged into that black hole of you dicks spitting all over my face while trying to sell me on some introductory low APRs that I don’t need.

[You’ve never seen Plinko, say you? You’re probably the same Commie bastards who think Drew Carey is an adequate replacement for the legendary Bob Barker. Let’s amend that:

I PASSED THIS UP. IF THAT’S NOT DISCIPLINE, I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS.]

My haul this year:

-Pizza from Extreme Pizza – not coupons, actual slices
-Four cans of various flavors of Izze soda
-Too many samples of OLA LOA, a new sugar-free energy drink, as well as a free packet of OLA LOA powder
-A bag of pita chips and a sample serving container of Sabra hummus
-8 oz. of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream
-Popcorn
-Vitamin Water samples
-Honest Tea samples
-A zip-up bottle cozy (now I can conceal my open bottle in public AND keep it cold!)
-A legitimate nice notebook from Bank of America along with Bank of America pen
-Five small notebooks
-A coupon for free 3 oz. of yogurt from Yogurtland (I WILL NEVER USE THIS COUPON, YOU DISGUSTING, WATERY-YOGURT-SERVING MOTHERFUCKERS)
-Five San Francisco Soup Company coupons for $1 off any soup or custom salad
-Two pens from the Cal Student Store with the Apple logo on it, made from entirely recycled products, such as cardboard shaft and wood clip
-A tube of kiwi lip balm (yum) in a LIP BALM COZY WITH A KEYCHAIN ATTACHED TO IT
-A bag of honey-roasted peanuts, courtesy of Southwest Airlines
-Three coupons from Extreme Pizza for a free slice of pizza with purchase of drink
-Two free tickets for free club house admission at Golden Gate Fields (“HIS MUDDER WAS A MUDDER?” – 5 extra credit points for reference)
-A couple “got sperm?” stickers
-Desi Dog coupons for $4.00 combo special: 1/4 lb. dog, fries, and soda/water

And the winner: a goodie bag from the Sperm Bank of California containing four latex condoms (Durex, not sketchy unmarked), a keychain bottle opener, and a sample packet of IDglide personal lubricant

My cheapass Chinese side was gleefully satisfied all in three hours.

In honor of Bob Barker: Remember to spay and neuter your pets, kids. (Er, I mean remember to spay and neuter your kids, pets.)

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Apprenticeship of a Weekend Warrior

10:30PM, in lab waiting for a gel to finish running (but to be fair, I rolled in at 2PM wearing a Transformers t-shirt, plaid shorts, and flip-flops after cramming my whole weeks' worth of errands into one morning. So I'm putting in my 8 hours).

Since the prospect of Cal football starting in 17 (RAHHAGHRGRHRAAAHAAHHH) days has me watching old Cal highlights nonstop and itching to watch ANY football, no matter how bad (seriously, I watched the Raiders-Cowboys preseason game), I've been talking to my friends about how this season is going to pan out. These discussions also led to logistics about how we're going to handle game days, since this is the first time we will be going to Cal games NOT being in band (read: NOT going to bed super early on Friday night so we do NOT have to wake up at the asscrack of dawn on Saturday morning to NOT rehearse).

My glorious, double secret probation ninja plan: to do five days' worth of work in four days every single week until December so I can skip almost every single Friday solely for the purpose of drinking my ass off. For home games, I can drink from Friday morning until Saturday after the game. I'm attending three away games this year (including Big Game), so Friday would be spent for travel and for making beer stops along the way. And the weeks when there are away games that I won't be attending or we have Byes...um...let's designate those "liver recovery weekends."

Go team:
[22:12] Gordo: i'm thinking about taking every single friday off until december
[22:12] Gordo: home games = take friday off to drink
[22:13] Gordo: and the three away games i'm going to = take friday off to travel/drink
[22:15] Gordo: mostly travel
[22:15] Gordo: drinking is secondary
[22:23] Gordo: "hey boss, i'm gonna miss work this friday"
[22:23] Gordo: "okay, are you going somewhere?"
[22:23] Gordo: "yep. BevMo."
[22:24] Ja Liule: "oh, awesome. remember to pick me up a six-pack"
Too bad I can't actually picture my boss saying that.

One day to NOT skip work, however, is August 28th. I kid you not, the first-ever National Single Cougar Convention is being held at Dinah's in, where else, PALO ALTO. This thing is 100% real: BOOM, YOU LITERAL MOTHERFUCKERS.

AsianShaq and I are 110% committed to going to this thing, if only for the entertainment value. $20 has never been better spent.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Scientists are weird people

The nature of doing molecular biology-related things for a living boils down to experiments and, more importantly, timing your experiments correctly so that you don't have to wake up at weird hours to make sure the experiments don't run on too long. Take me, for example. It's 3:35AM, and I am in lab right now, groggy-eyed with a massive craving for In-N-Out that I can't fulfill because it's far too late for that. I came into lab about an hour ago to stop the restriction enzyme digest that I started far too late in the day and consequently forgot about due to Jonathan Sanchez sucking ass against the Dodgers in the 4th inning of today's game. The digestion should have taken only 1-2 hours, meaning I should have come in at around 7pm to stop it, but again, the tears streaming from my eyes watching Sanchez revert to his old form of suckitude blinded me, rendering me unable to operate heavy machinery and vehicular transportation (that, and I just plain fell asleep from a couple of Coors Lights. Laugh away, but I have a job and chances are you don't so HA.)

Now, when I was down at UCLA, going into lab at weird hours and seeing other people there was uncommon but not entirely unexpected - the nature of academic research is a little bit different than corporate. Here, it's pretty much the 8-6 grind, and after around 6:30 or 7, everyone pretty much goes home.

Imagine my surprise, then, to be fumbling around in the kitchen brewing a cup of tea and hearing footsteps coming down the hall.

I froze and slowly turned around. My first thought was that FDU was here already, since he lives relatively close by and is awake at the buttcrack of dawn every day anyway. But even 3AM is a little early for him. Who, then, could it possibly be? The morning cleaning crew? Do we even have a morning cleaning crew?

I came face-to-face with AnimeGirl, one of the quiet but very nice RAs here (okay I don't know if she's actually super into anime but her unique haircut - mostly shoulder length except for some really long hair down the middle back - made me think of it immediately so that's what she'll be from now on until further notice kthxbai).

"Hey." So nonchalant. So natural. As if seeing your co-workers at work at 3AM was the perfectly normal thing to expect.

"Um...hey. What are you doing here?" I immediately regretted asking the question, as I didn't quite know the answer to that question if it were directed towards myself.

"I got here at 6PM, so I'm just about finishing up here."

"Oh okay. Um...I know what this looks like. I swear, I'm not here at 3AM just raiding the fridge for company food - I'm actually doing work but I need a pick-me-up."

I actually finished my work (including updating my lab notebook, something I haven't done for a period of time too embarrassingly long to admit) about an hour ago. Why am I writing right now, then? Because, once again, the long dick of Murphy's Law fucks me in the ass.

Our complex is right next to a big trainyard. Starting around 6 or 7 in the afternoon, they start shuffling the trains around, and this involved moving the trains out into the street such that cars cannot cross. If timed poorly, traffic can get stuck at that intersection for a good fifteen minutes minimum (I've heard up to half an hour from others here, and my heart goes out to them.) Just as I was walking out the door, I heard the obnoxious CLANG CLANG CLANG of the trains shuffling around. The gates were down, the red lights were blinking, and once again, the merciless biology gods above have decided to mess with poor Gordo's sleep schedule some more.

25 days until Cal football.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Bucket List, The Lawrence Taylor/Michael Jordan/Barry Bonds/Pee Wee Herman Edition

Football arenas to visit:
-Neyland Stadium at Tennessee – Knoxville, TN
-Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech - Blacksburg, VA
-The Big House at Michigan - Ann Arbor, MI
-The Swamp at Florida – Gainesville, FL
-Death Valley at LSU – Baton Rouge, LA
-The Horseshoe at Ohio State - Columbus, OH
-Beaver Stadium at Penn State – University Park, PA
-Watching Cal beat UCLA at the Rose Bowl on October 17, 2009 - Pasadena, CA
-Watching Cal beat Oregon at Autzen Stadium on September 26, 2009 – Eugene, OR

Baseball stadiums to visit:
-Oakland Coliseum – Oakland, CA THE WORST BASEBALL STADIUM IN THE ENTIRE FRIGGIN’ WORLD
-PacBell Park (YES I SAID IT, IT’S PACBELL) – San Francisco, CA
-Wrigley Field – Chicago, IL
-Fenway Park – Boston, MA
-Camden Yards – Baltimore, MD
-Yankee Stadium – New York, NY

Basketball arenas to visit:
-Oracle Arena – Oakland, CA
-American Airlines Center – Dallas, TX
-Staples Center – Los Angeles, CA
-Madison Square Garden – New York, NY
-Boston Garden (current) – Boston, MA
-Pauley Pavilion at UCLA – Los Angeles, CA
-Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke – Durham, NC (and Krzyzewskiville)
-Allen Fieldhouse at Kansas – Lawrence, KS
-The Dean Dome at UNC – Chapel Hill, NC
-The Palestra at UPenn – Philadelphia, PA

Miscellaneous places to visit:
-That super shady adult store on Telegraph that has $5 DVD sales right now – Berkeley, CA

Sunday, August 2, 2009

The things we do for money

A friend of mine who recently moved to Madison, WiscAAAnsin is trying to look for housing while staying in temp housing.

This is why I am staying the fuck away from the midwest:

(1:20:19 PM) Wiscansin: my temp housing ended
(1:20:23 PM) Gordo: shit
(1:20:26 PM) Wiscansin: so i moved into this like crack spot motel
(1:20:30 PM) Gordo: lol
(1:20:52 PM) Wiscansin: i think your life expectancy goes down by a month for every night you stay here
(1:21:25 PM) Gordo: hahaha
(1:22:30 PM) Wiscansin: the good thing is that there are 4 bolts on the door
(1:22:39 PM) Wiscansin: the bad thing is that somebody thought it was necessary to put 4 bolts there
(1:22:55 PM) Wiscansin has signed off.