If you take a look at timeline of my recent writing history, you’ll notice that I was MIA from October of last year to January of 2010. Those three months were an adventure not unlike an oddly eerie, opium-fueled thrice-international trip you’d expect from Lewis Carroll. (…or Chris Farley TOO SOON?)
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I met them on a website. These four ladies were always together, attached at the hip, closer than sisters. Each of them was uniquely different, yet all of them were irresistibly sensual. One was quick-witted and filled with facts; another had a slow-brewing mind and was highly analytical about everything around her. I especially liked this one – she was simple on the surface, but I had a feeling that she would be frustratingly complex once I got to know her better. Of all four girls, only one of them was short and seemingly mentally challenged. Must be all that acetone and ethanol she has with her all the time, I thought. But, my word, she was gorgeous. It was hard to compare them all, so I decided that I must have all of them.
I sauntered over, nervous yet confident, and slapped down $230.
“Hey girls, how’s about all y’all hangin’ with me for the next few months?”
The first couple weeks were filled with simple flirting beneath the sweet caress of fluorescent light from the study carrels at the library. Eventually, I felt comfortable enough to bring them out to my favorite fine dining establishments. At the beginning of this thrilling courtship, I’d take them out for a night on the town and show them what the odd sides of Berkeley offer in the dark of night. After a couple weeks of playing this game, we finally engaged in a passionate hours-long orgy, complete with chocolate, caramel, strawberries, bowling pins, and Mike Tyson’s tiger.
That night – oh, what a night – locked us within each other’s destinies. Eventually, I became a disciple of Senator Bill Henrickson, the tragic yet hilariously fortunate protagonist in HBO’s Big Love. I took the dive and married all four of them.
Four dresses, four rings, four vows, four wedding parties, and one big honeymoon later, we started having marital issues. Just as well, I figured. Over 50% of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce anyway. If I’m lucky, at least two of these money-grubbing whores will be gone by the end of January.
No dice. As the weeks went by, the fights got worse, the yelling got louder, the bottles and beer cans emptied faster. Pretty soon, I was abusing them so badly, both mentally and physically, that Joe Jackson would have been proud of my work. I had no regrets. None.
I woke up one morning and found all four of them gone. Like a lone feather in a harsh winter gale, they were nowhere to be seen. I looked high and low for them, but to no avail. I returned home, exhausted but feeling an odd sense of relief. That’s when I saw the divorce papers on the kitchen table. The date of separation was set for January 31, 2010. It finally hit me – this relationship had been doomed to fail from the very start. Who the hell has enough time and energy to split among four wives, anyway? (HT: Mormon Fundamentalists.)
I picked up the nearest pen and scratched my John Hancock on those papers with zeal. “My pleasure, ladies. My total god-damn pleasure.”
The big day finally came. I made my way to the address on the divorce papers, deep in the heart of the San Francisco financial district.
What an odd little building, I thought. It was the right place, but almost TOO right. It was just so…sterile. No matter. I walked in and checked myself in. Twenty minutes later, I was asked in.
There was no judge, no jury, no mediators. The ladies weren’t even there. Instead, I proceeded to answer a series of computer-given multiple-choice questions tangentially related to my marriage for the past three months.
11. How many ATP are required to transform pyruvate into glucose?
A. 5
B. 6
C. 7
D. 8
“How in the hell am I supposed to know this?”
But wait. Mrs. MCAT Biology had told me this on the first day we met. If I just think back hard enough, I can answer this. The test went on and on, asking me everything from my sexual history with Mrs. MCAT Gen. Chem. to a criminal report about Mrs. MCAT Physics. I took my time, swiftly yet surely answering each question the glaring screen threw at me.
Five hours later, it was all over. Divorce finalized, I breathed a sigh of relief. I haven’t seen those soul-wrenching succubi since, and I could not be happier. Turns out that those three months were handy, seeing how my MCAT score actually turned out to be pretty respectable.
Moral of the story: studying actually paid off. Also, butt cheeks can’t have freckles – wear a condom.
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If you’ve hung out with me at all, you know I like to use any stupid little reason to celebrate, so long as drinking is involved. The minute I finished my MCAT, I whipped out the flask of Jameson I had kept in my bookbag and started my night off right. I ate like a king at Zabu Zabu on University Ave. Suffering those three months of abuse and crappy late-night sushi was worth every single delicious bite of quick-boiled meats.
Of course, no night of decent celebration could be complete without my favorite watering hole, Beta Lounge. The whole gang was there, including my fellow MCAT war survivors, PermaRA, TheYoc, and Teeks. (Interestingly enough, I’ll be going to school on the bEast Coast this coming fall with Teeks, while TheYoc is staying here in THA BAY to attend UCfreakingSF. If you know who he is and you see him, congratulate him, then do me a favor and punch him in the face for being too smart.)
$180 of drinks later, I wandered back to my apartment along with $R$, BestBruinEVER and PermaRA. Considering my lack of fine motor skills, I thought I’d take the crappy excuse for an elevator up one floor to my unit. The three decided to come with.
We got in, pushed the “2” button, and…nothing.
“Uhh…are we moving?” $R$ questioned warily.
“No, I don’t think we are.” PermaRA made the executive decision to just take the one flight of stairs up. I vehemently (read: drunkenly and foolishly) refused. “I am taking the elevator if I damn well please! I LIVE HERE! WOOO RICKAY BOBBAYYY!!!!”
So the three of them stood outside and watched me through the three-by-six-inch window of the elevator door. I pushed “2” again. This time, the sliding door moved…then got stuck 90% of the way before fully closing. Crap, I thought. I could’ve just walked the one flight of stairs. What am I doing?
I jammed on the “Door Open” button. No response.
I looked all around the panel to see if there were other buttons I could push to rectify this situation. I looked up and saw the City of Berkeley Elevator Permit taped up top. The permit expired in April 2008. Scenes of the terrible horror movie Final Destination started to flash before my eyes.
I’m the kind of guy who has no problem drinking expired milk or eating expired processed meats. I guess an expired elevator license shouldn’t be that much worse. Boy, was I ever wrong about THAT assumption. Neither the “Door Open” nor the “Door Close” buttons worked. I started to panic, but that panic quickly turned into excitement.
“Oh my God, it’s like I’m in some awesome Hollywood movie.” See what a little booze does to your judgment? This is your brain on drugs, kids.
“I’ll try going upstairs to call the elevator to see if that’ll make it move!” Thunk thunk thunk went PermaRA’s quick steps. I waited. And waited.
“Did you push it yet?”
“Yeah. I guess it didn’t work.”
Panic set in once again, and much like pre-labor contractions, this one hit me harder than ever. Enter Bruce Banner. With sheer frustration and for lack of a better plan, I gripped my sweaty fingers onto the sliding door and pushed it right as hard as I could.
Ka-THUNK. “Oooooh holy CRAP it’s moving!”
An elevator ride that normally would have taken 45 seconds turned into eight minutes’ worth of a story I can tell for the rest of my life. Nobody was hurt, and I didn’t even have a hangover the next day. Go me.
Thank heavens I got out of that elevator when I did. I’m pretty sure that if I had been stuck in there for just another five minutes, this would’ve happened:
That would NOT have been good. Bruce Willis is WAY too old to save me from life-threatening situations like that.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
30% irony, 100% coincidence
I can’t tell how much of this is irony and how much of it is plain dumb luck: watching an episode of Trauma on Hulu, thinking that it’s crappy and poorly written (there’s no way a person with claustrophobia could make it as a paramedic – the back of an ambulance is TINY), and then personally requiring emergency medical assistance a mere two hours later due to hypoglycemic shock at the gym. They sent six - count 'em, SIX - paramedics (okay, really 5.5, because one of them was a Basic on observation only) to take care of one little ol' me. And all I really needed was a can of Mountain Dew to get my blood sugar up.
The lesson of the day: EAT before you work out. Don’t be in a hurry/stupid like me.
The lesson of the day: EAT before you work out. Don’t be in a hurry/stupid like me.
Monday, March 1, 2010
“I am your density.” – George McFly
There are various cheesy motivational posters put up around my workplace. If you’ve seen them, you know what I’m talking about. The posters have some inspiring HD photograph of a majestic bird in flight or a majestic stone arch or the majestic ocean or some other majestic crap in the middle. Written underneath it is some big key word in all caps, key words taken from the glossary of the American Standard Guidebook of Boring Corporate Motivational Team-Building Exercises. Underneath the key word is some short adage meant to inspire you and make you feel better about contributing to your team. A simple gigantic banner asking “Is this good for the COMPANY?” might be more cost-effective.
I hate these motivator posters with all my heart. How effective could a $20 poster really be in order to get employees to stop dicking around for five hours a day playing paper football or throwing paper clips at each other?
Today only further cemented my disdain for these motivator posters. The one I saw today said the following:
“DESTINY: The choices we make, not the chances we take, determine our destiny.”
I looked at this and I felt my neurons set on fire, one by one. Isn’t the act of taking a chance a conscious, self-made choice in and of itself? Furthermore, isn’t destiny defined as an inevitable conclusion regardless of actions taken? So even if the choices we make were the true drivers of our immediate direction in life, how can they DETERMINE our DESTINY if the very definition of destiny is founded upon PREdetermination?
There were so many things self-contradictory with this statement that I had to sit down for five minutes to collect myself before moving on with my day. Someone should thank me that I didn’t have a lighter to set the damn thing on fire.
By the way, my favorite Demotivator of all time, courtesy of Despair.com: “BLOGGING: Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.” The wordplay makes me giddy like a schoolgirl.
I hate these motivator posters with all my heart. How effective could a $20 poster really be in order to get employees to stop dicking around for five hours a day playing paper football or throwing paper clips at each other?
Today only further cemented my disdain for these motivator posters. The one I saw today said the following:
“DESTINY: The choices we make, not the chances we take, determine our destiny.”
I looked at this and I felt my neurons set on fire, one by one. Isn’t the act of taking a chance a conscious, self-made choice in and of itself? Furthermore, isn’t destiny defined as an inevitable conclusion regardless of actions taken? So even if the choices we make were the true drivers of our immediate direction in life, how can they DETERMINE our DESTINY if the very definition of destiny is founded upon PREdetermination?
There were so many things self-contradictory with this statement that I had to sit down for five minutes to collect myself before moving on with my day. Someone should thank me that I didn’t have a lighter to set the damn thing on fire.
By the way, my favorite Demotivator of all time, courtesy of Despair.com: “BLOGGING: Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.” The wordplay makes me giddy like a schoolgirl.
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