Anyone looking to move into Manhattan around midtown around June through August?

Nothing in Particular

The best thing about hitting the heavy bag, is that moment, when you take the gloves off, unwrap your hands, and suddenly feel the overwhelming strain in your forearms and wrists.  And then you think to yourself, "My god, I'm too powerful for my own good."

Someone was telling me the other day about these coffee shops in Viet Town in Cali where the waitresses all wear bikinis. And they all have large breasts because the store pays for their boob jobs.  And the second thing that came to mind (the first obviously being "Oh my god, take me there) was to wonder whether or not the shops can capitalize the tits as an asset on their balance sheet.  People are always referring to them as assets anyways right?  What kind of depreciation would a pair of fake tits have?  I mean, a nice pair of fake breasts has a fairly long useful life.  It's not the tits that go bad, it's the face.  If I were the IRS I'd give them 25 years GAAP with 10-year MACRS to encourage breast implant investment.  I mean, really, talk about incremental benefits.

I went into Modell's the other week. I couldn't find what I wanted immediately, so I walked over to a girl working there and asked her whether or not they carried leggings. She paused, gave me a strange look, held the strange look for about 30 seconds, and then replied,"YEA, for WOMEN."  This is never a good sign for something you're about to run around the streets of New York in. Perhaps I should have referred to them as running tights. 

I did eventually find the men's running tights. I then proceeded to go for a run outside on the coldest day of the year. When you wear a suit into a store, you get a certain kind of respect. You'll notice they move a little faster. They smile a little more. (Fast food restaurants are an exception for some reason. The workers there give you extra attitude on purpose. I suspect because the workers there are (1) not paid on commission (2) resigned to their fate and therefore (3) hold no delusions of ever sitting across the table from you in an interview, lending or any other form of professional setting. Thus, it becomes perfectly okay to act like not knowing the exact drink lineup of every Mcdonalds in the city makes you some kind of retard. Because even if you complain and they get fired, the KFC across the street is hiring too. And we all know how much they love fried chicken. Mcdonald's workers that is.) When you run outside when it's 20 degrees below freezing though, you get a different kind of respect.  People twenty yards away from you move out of your way.  It's the "this mother fucker is crazy" kind of respect.

Charitable act of the week:  Speaking of running, about a week ago, I was running outside.  It makes no difference story-wise, but because I know you're wondering I'll tell you: yes, I was wearing my tights and no, it did not look sexy. Anyways, now when I run over the cellar doors in the city, I like to stomp on them. Don't know why, it's a "my god, I'm alive" sort of thing I suppose. But this day, just as I was about to stomp on a cellar door, midair, I noticed two senior citizens standing nearby. Afraid that the loud noise might just give them a heart-attack and kill them on the spot, I summoned every bit of ninja in my Asian blood and feather-stepped over the grate. I'm happy to say that because of my gracious act, both elderly people survived, and though their nearly expired persons are not expected on this Earth much longer, should still be alive today. This section was originally intended to be called the "Charitable act of the day," but because I have not done anything charitable since then I've had to alter it. I am attempting an exercise in positivity in calling it the "Charitable act of the week," but in all reality, fully expect it to become something more akin to "Charitable act of the half-century."

My Love Life is Non-Existent. Statistically Speaking

When I told my mother I was single again, the first thing she said to me was "Ni ying gai hui lai bu yi bu." Which means "You should come home for the weekend and recuperate from any emotional and psychological trauma you may have suffered." Loosely translated. 22 years old and my mother still thinks I'm the same little boy who needed his hand held whenever he got a shot.

I'm not sure how my mother's mind works, but directly after this, she asked, "Wait, so does this mean you're going to go back to being...pro...uhhh...pro...pro-miss...uhhh...you know...uhhh...that word that means you come and go with a lot of women...?"
"Promiscuous?"
"YES. PROMISCUOUS! I can never say it right."
..........

Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. I mean...really...I had no idea that my mother's vocabulary was that advanced. How many of your parents could call you up to ask you if you were going to return to a life of promiscuity?

The summer of my junior year, I made a mistake - I tried dating a close friend. It lasted two months. When it was over, I thought there was no way I'd ever have another relationship shorter than that. So when my next relationship ended six weeks shy of two months, I was forced to take notice of a disturbing trend in my love life. So I did what any normal person would have done upon noticing such a trend:

I plugged the length of my adult relationships into excel, graphed it, added an exponential trendline and extrapolated the equation and R-squared value.

According to the historical data of my life, there is a 96.93% chance that my next relationship will last 2 days. The one after that will last slightly less than 7 hours. By the 6th girl, I will be forced to measure my relationships in seconds. I've been practicing and am now fairly certain that, if given a yes response fast enough, I will be able get into and out of a relationship in under a second.

"Go out with me." "OK." "I think we should break up."

Some other trends in my love life: My last three relationships have all ended in September. For three years running. 2004, 2005 and 2006. Also, my last three relationships have lasted, respectively, 2 years, then 2 months, and then 2 weeks. After doing some calculations, I believe this increases the probability that my next relationship will last 2 days from 96.93% to somewhere around 99.89%.

So to answer your question mom, statistically speaking, it seems that yes, I will go back to a life of promiscuity. Promiscuity speckled with annual blink-of-an-eye relationships that will all begin somewhere between August 30th and end somewhere before September 30th. While I may have a sex life, my love life will be nonexistent, statistically speaking.

But in all honesty, I wouldn't mind an outlier.

Maybe Saturday They Will - Part I

I would usually begin this story by going back, way back, to the beginning of the beginning. Though this story starts around 10 PM in a bathroom at Porky's Bar and Restaurant, I would probably start the story somewhere around 9 AM of that morning. I'd discuss how I did my hair that morning...people I saw...people I went there with...the exact beverages I drank that created the urge that put me in the bathroom of Porky's at 10 PM. It's something I picked up from my dad. As a child, if I asked him something like "Hey dad, what's the pythagorean theorem again?" he would respond with, "Well, first we need to understand who Pythagoras was. He lived in Greece around..." I suppose that after discussing Pythagora's childhood, education, sex life and death he probably would've gotten to the actual theorem, but I'll never actually know - I never sat around that long.

But there's a certain sense of urgency in my life, now that I have less and less of my personal time to myself. So today, I will start right in the meat of the story. No lead up. I won't even discuss who I was there with. They're of no importance anyhow, they play no part in this story. Except Ildong - but he'll only appear for a sentence. (For those who do not know Ildong, Ildong is a friend and ex-roommate and not a nickname for my genitals. Although my genitals actually play a much larger part in this story than he does.)

So I go into the stall at Porky's to take a piss. The door proves difficult to close, so I close it as well as possible and leave it unlocked. There is a bathroom attendant working in there. I figure that should someone try to come into the stall while I'm in there, he'll stop them.

Thirty seconds into my piss, I am proven wrong. The stall door opens. I figure that the guy will see me in there and go back out. I am proven wrong again. The guy steps all the way into the stall. Now I'm a bit uncomfortable. It's not so much because I'm taking a piss in a stall while a stranger stands five feet away - it's more that my rusty knowledge of geometry tells me that he is standing at an angle that allows him to be in full sight of my dick...

Not that I am ashamed of my dick - Just slightly uncomfortable with a stout, sloppy, drunk Latino guy ogling it.  

And then I realize he's not looking at my piece. He doesn't have time to. He is far too busy convincing the equally-drunk, equally-ugly, slightly-fatter Latino chick, whom he is obviously trying to have fat, Latino, dive-bar-bathroom sex with, not to leave. In between consoling her with,"It's okay...it's okay..." he is yelling at me, "Hey man, you gotta get out man, you gotta get out!" And despite the fact that I also notice that the black bathroom attendant is also halfway in the stall trying to explain to Fat-and-Fatter they can't be there...despite the fact there is now a virtual audience watching me take a piss, I think it's hilarious. It's all I can do to stop myself from breaking out laughing.

I stretch out my piss as long as possible. I fake a bladder problem and make my piss like city traffic: stop-and-go. Not because I'm pissed that this guy burst into my stall. Not even because he's standing there yelling at me to hurry up. I do it because I don't approve of fat sex. And it's not because fat sex is totally gross and disgusting and the thought of it makes me want to vomit - it's because fat sex occasionally ends in the creation of a fat baby. A fat baby who will undoubtedly grow up to be a fat person who will, not only take up the entire sidewalk, but walk slow doing it...take up two god damn seats on the subway even though they only paid for one...make buffet prices more expensive for everyone and pay the same price for a shirt as I do even though theirs uses 5 times the material...

It takes a bit, but I run out of urine. Unable to stall any longer, I unzip my pants and leave the stall. The obstruction of this travesty is now completely in the attendant's hands. Unfortunately, a minute or so later, so is sixty dollars. Bribe accepted, the stall door closes and I take my leave before the bathroom is filled with the sounds of cellulite slapping together.

According to yesterday's AM New York, three Queens psychics were charged with fraud when they offered to rid undercover officers of evil spirits for $1,000. Apparently, by New York state law it is illegal to claim to be a fortune teller capable of using occult powers or exorcising evil spirits - unless you state clearly that it's for entertainment purposes only.

First of all, why are we protecting these people? If you're crazy enough to think you're being haunted by evil spirits...and retarded enough to spend $1,000 to get rid of them...then you're probably crazy and retarded enough to think the fortune teller's voodoo chanting, dirt throwing and dick shaking will work. The hauntings are in these people's minds. They don't need the fucking ghost busters, they need peace of mind, which is what these con artists are offering. And $1,000 may seem expensive, but it's relatively cheap compared to what they really need - a brain transplant. But who's going to get peace of mind from an exorcist that "exorcises evil spirits (for entertainment purposes only)"? Yea, because that's what people do for entertainment. That's what I wanna do on my next date. "Oh, hey look...let's go get our spirits exorcised!"

And is this what undercover cops are doing these days? Whatever happened to Donnie Brasco? Go bust a drug ring you lazy bastards.

In other news, the MTA is supposedly in the midst of a "financial crisis" and has been accused of considering a 22% rate hike. A 5% rate hike is already budgeted for 2007. Um yea, I'm pretty sure only a couple months ago I was reading about an "unprecedented budget surplus" at the MTA. Millions of extra dollars that they couldn't figure out how to spend. I guess they solved that problem. You people spend money like I spend money. Except I'm a 21 year old Chinese guy who hasn't started his full-time job yet...and you're the fucking MTA.

Let me tell you right now, if they hike the rate 22% i will PERSONALLY PROTEST this ATROCITY, by BOYCOTTING the subway, and WALKING the ten blocks from my apartment to work. Or at least I will when it's not raining out. Or snowing. Or too hot, too cold, too sunny, too windy, or not windy enough.

Fucking bureaucrats can't scramble fast enough to spend money when there's a surplus. Haven't you ever heard of saving for a rainy day? 'Coz it rains all the time in New York. Sometimes it rains highjacked airplanes. You think if Al Qaeda attacked again, it'd be in Wisconsin?  

On that note: Wisconsin...you need to give your homeland security money back and go back to milking cows.