California!

Man, what a bizarre place I'm headed to. I feel strangely like an outsider as I zoom by spots like Pacific Beach, full of surfers and failed auditioners for The Hills.

I was in San Diego this week to find myself an apartment for my upcoming jaunt to grad school. After a stressful full day of bad apartment tours and sketchy property owners, I found myself a Taiwanese lady looking to rent her furnished place in a complex I like right by the UCSD campus. I used my Asian Studies skillz to beat the competition, secure the place, and at $100 under her asking price for each month's rent.

How does one use Asian Studies in finding an apartment? The following two ways:

-Say that I'm staying a long time. OK, on second thought, any landlord would prefer a guy who says he'll stay two years to someone who doesn't know how long they'll stay, but at least I get a few points for connecting that to Confucius in my head, right? I also used my long stay as leverage to get the rent to come down.
-The lease starting date was earlier than I wanted, so I asked for a discount on the first month's rent... by invoking my mother. I don't even know how I did it, and I'm not sure it was grammatical when I asked, but it broke the ice on a negotiation where my then-tentative landlady was starting to hold firm. OK, so in all fairness it wasn't a massive discount and she knew I was agreeing to pay for earlier than I wanted to.

Still, I'm holding to my theory that my extremely skewed and limited knowledge of Chinese philosophy helped me get a place that I actually like.

Don't have pics yet, but it's a small studio with an OK bed, a wee little TV stand, a nice glass dining table, and a fully stocked kitchen (plates, knives, cooking ware, etc.) and even linens. This is nice, because I don't have to dig into my savings to go on a shopping rampage at Ikea or stress out over selling it all in a last-second rush upon my eventual departure from SD.

My time not spent apartment hunting was spent observing California. Here's what I found, which will no doubt contribute to an overwhelming sense of culture shock and possible depression come July or August:

-Yelling hobos
-More sushi places than all other cuisines' restaurants put together
-A linguistic melting pot not unlike Blade Runner. That is, tons of people speaking a huge variety of languages on the street.
-A taco shop [there's also tons of these] decorated entirely with the inspiration of Lucha Libre wrestling
-Nice weather with overcast skies called "shitty weather"
-Car pornography so nasty it's bannable in Germany: Ferrari/Maserati, Lotus, and Bentley dealers all in a 3-block radius, also next to private sellers with more Ferraris, a Ford GT and a Veyron. How you doin', La Jolla.
-San Diego staying classy

@Twitter:

You're so overrated.

Let me list your legit uses:

1. Keeping track of people during large events (like SxSW)
2. Keeping track of people during catastrophic emergencies (like natural disasters)
3. Promoting your cause if you're an activist (like Al Gore) or a performer (like your buddy who's a musician or DJ).

Now let me list the really lame reasons people actually use you:

1. To have actual conversations with friends (What?! We have phones and texting, people, how are @replies any better?)
2. As a source of news for CNN (Impending apocalypse and collapse of the American empire? Heeeeeeeeeeere's yer sign.)
3. To shill new blog entries (If your blog's that interesting, I read it.)
4. To try (and fail) to be witty using 140 characters. (The extremely witty John Mayer is exempt from this complaint.)
5. To announce one's drunkenness between 1:00 and 3:00AM. (We know.)

And to top it off, you've got a whole stack of problems:

1. My shrink dad had suicidal patients that were more stable.
2. When you're actually online, you've still got bugs like phantom follower requests.
3. I get worthless follower requests from organizations and anonymous individuals in which I have no interest whatsoever. Shouldn't this legally constitute spam?

So, with all of the above points in mind, I'm abandoning you. I'll leave my account active, and I'll probably confirm follower requests, but I'm stopping the updates, removing the iPhone app, and removing it from my favorites.

We're done, and I hope the world eventually realizes that the Twitter plague is infinitely more dangerous to society than #swine_flu.

For posterity's sake

In the last couple of years, I've grown more accustomed to the idea of selling games back to stores or just renting them through GameFly (like Netflix for games) and never owning them in the first place. Occasionally, though, a game will be such a classic that it has to stay in my possession, and I have no problem shelling out the additional cash to buy a game for keeps.

It's not that I necessarily plan on replaying the game - going back to a game is something I very rarely do - but it's more like I'm keeping it in the family. I still have all my old video game systems, like my NES and Super NES, sitting in a closet, too. In the same way my mom has amassed a library that's too broad for a house full of bookshelves, I'm building a video game library for my family's posterity.

You laugh now, but I'll be the super-cool dad with the super-cool kid who's raised on the original Super Mario Bros. sometime around 2020 or 2025.

In the last year or so I've really only played two games that I intend to make part of the library. But beyond that, there's tons of great games that I hope to play with my eventual family, like pretty much any Mario or Zelda game, Donkey Kong Country, Chrono Trigger (man, what a fantastic game, even today), Mario Kart, Metal Gear Solid, and a whole stack of PC games that won't be playable 10 or 15 years from now.

So, gamers, what's in your library for your kids?

We now have an open position for...

Wedding date, starting last weekend in May.

Female age 20-30 required.

Ideal candidate is an outgoing woman, comfortable in a new social environment and lover of dancing. Willingness to dress up is a plus, as is familiarity with the Plan II program which is responsible for this marriage.

The selected candidate will be compensated in the form of free champagne, all meals and the opportunity to dress up. This position is for Austin, TX; those not currently residing in Austin will have their transportation covered by Blake.

Candidates are encouraged to apply via Twitter, Facebook poke, instant message or text message.

Blake is an equal opportunity wedding date and will equally consider applicants of all races and levels of cuteness.

Update: The position has been filled.

Mom went car shopping

and she came home with one of these! A BMW 328i coupe in the gorgeous Blue Water Metallic. It's a color-shifting paint that looks gray dead on and a beautiful light blue from any other angle. She fell in love with the color combination (the interior's the usual BMW light tan affair), signed on the dotted line immediately, and drove it home.

Like Jeremy Clarkson himself, I feel that the right car is the one that stirs your heart. Mom let her heartstrings get pulled with this one, and she even capitulated to the car's persistence in coming with the Sports Package - something she didn't necessarily want, but can live with - in order to have this car.

I have to say, Mom's developed an excellent taste in cars over the years.