Hisashiburi: Part Deux

Well it's 6 in the fucking A.M., and I'm still awake. Every once in a while, my insomnia runs rampant, and I end staying up all night (i.e., I don't go to sleep until "normal time" the next night). By "every once in a while" I mean about once a week. Strangely enough, whenever this happens I don't really feel any more tired than usual...not to mention the extended TV-watching, video game-playing, and book-reading opportunities this skill affords me. So what does this mean? It means I've decided to talk about other crap that happened since my second to last post (the one from January) and/or to extrapolate on crap I talked about in my last post. If I feel like it, I'll add pics later.

=Spring Break (check out the equal signs instead of normal dashes...this is part deux!...shut the hell up, I'm bored and watching the Mr. T cartoon at 6 o'clock in the fucking morning on a Tuesday.)=
Spring Break was fun.







Ok, I'll go a little more into detail. I went out to California with my dad for some car-renting, road-tripping fun. It was sweet. We spent some time in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Napa Valley (wine country), and Big Sur (cliffs, trees, and beaches). When we visited Big Sur, we ate at the famous Nepenthes restaurant. It was kind of coincidental in that I had brought along Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, one of my favorite books of all time, to read for about the millionth time while on the plane(s). He mentions visiting the restaurant in the book, and my dad suggested going there without me mentioning it to him. Who knows, I might have actually sat at the same seat Thompson did (at some point in his life), eating delicious food and watching whales in the distance from a cliff hundreds of feet up a cliff over the ocean. Oh, and getting attacked by the crazy birds. Too bad we didn't enjoy more coincidences with my favorite book...like the ample supply of mescaline. Haha...ha...just...just kidding...ha....

Anyways, the trip was fun, we had a ton of awesome food and wine, hung out at some sweet beaches, and got out of Indiana for a week. That's always cause for celebration.

=Class/Graduation=
Oh yeah, minor detail about the last five months, I went to class (sometimes...ok, not very often, but at least I went a little) and passed. Thusly, I am, as of May 6th, 2006, a college graduate. Lovely.

You know, it's interesting to see the varying paths my friends and fellow graduates (or otherwise) are taking now that they're done with school. Hopefully, the A-Team will end up in Japan once again. Some of my friends are freaking out about jobs. Some have jobs. Some decided to quit after 4 years and leave without a degree (I'm just tempting myself here -- I definitely don't feel like going into this for fear that I might go crazy and become a danger to myself and others). Like all the "major events" in my life, as far as I can tell, I am unaffected by the end of this chapter to my life.

=I need a girlfriend for the express purpose of keeping me out of situations like this one (and other reasons I guess)=
Due to some shred of honor and dignity that I possess (and laziness), I'm going to leave out any sordid or overtly identifying aspects of this story. That being said, I narrowly escaped certain death towards the end of last semester. Ok, not really physical death, but copious amounts of pain and suffering. I ended up getting roped into a short pseudo-relationship with the room mate of a friend of mine. I drunkenly (after many games of beer pong at Pat's) went home with and ALMOST hooked up with her. This is where the situation got rough (for me at least): she's physically attractive and we share a few interests. Unfortunately, she's not the type I typically pursue a romantic relationship with. Even more unfortunately, she seemed to be crazy about me (i.e., if I told her I wanted to keep the relationship platonic, she'd probably freak out and it would be soooooooo awkward. And no one wants that.). So what did I do? I completely blew her off. She eventually got my phone number from her room mate (my buddy), and started calling me. I didn't answer/return her calls, and excluding one short night of weakness after which I had to make up some bullshit excuse to leave her place (she kept calling me so I invited her to Yogi's one night on Little Five weekend with the Horwitz crew), I never saw her again. Until the Pat vs. Ronan drinking night...Keep in mind that I think this girl had been to Pat's house twice before that night (including the night we ALMOST hooked up); considering the amount of parties Pat had, even at that residence alone, her attendance can be ranked among the lowest of the low. This is in contrast to her room mate who came to Pat's parties quite often. So anyways, her room mate shows up with, YARGH, her in tow. Sure there might be other reasons why she came, but I'm pretty sure it's because she figured I'd be there. Flattering, but a bit creepy. This (and some advice from Anthony) prompted me to do something I hadn't done in a long time. Back in the day (that is, freshman and sophomore year), I had the tendency to get bored at parties and would just leave (walk or drive) without telling anybody. Used to piss a lot of people off. Anywho, that's exactly what I did that night. Came back from a short jaunt to the VP, got a beer, stood outside and talked to everybody for about 10 minutes, noticed that the chick chasing me was occupied talking to Pat (note: I found out later she was asking about me or something), nonchalantly walked into the vacant house through the back door, tossed my empty can in the trash, and walked right out the front door. She called me later and left an inquisitive voicemail, and I have not heard from or seen her since. Eh, I figured it would be easier if she just wrote me off as an asshole instead of me having to keep avoiding her clutches and turning down her advances.

Wow, I talked about that at much greater length than I originally planned. Eh.

=Deadwood=
It's a good show.



That's all.

=Did I miss anything?=
Hell yes I did, but I either don't feel like writing anymore or can't remember anything else at the moment. Oh well. It's light out now, and I was planning on getting up in 2 hours anyways, so maybe I'll try and take a quick nap before I head up to Indy. Probably won't happen, but there's always hope. I just wish there were always free popsicles. I love popsicles. Especially when they're free.

Hisashi-motherfucking-buri.

Well, as per my typical M.O., this is my first post in roughly 5 months despite the lofty ambitions I purported in my last few posts. Oops.

A lot has happened (no shit) since my last post, and I have absolutely no intention of catching you up on all of it. What a pity huh? Instead, I'll give you the key points. So, without further ado...

-Japan (and my plans to move there)-
As anyone who knows me...uh...knows, I've been planning on moving to Japan for quite some time now, post-graduation. Well, those plans are coming to fruition as we speak. Nova (English teaching company) has offered me a job, and I interview with Aeon on Thursday. I think I performed quite well at the Nova interview, so I'm optimistic about the Aeon one. I'm requesting to be placed in Chiba (near Tokyo) since that's the area I'm familiar with, but I'm also seriously considering Osaka (due in no small part to Jun's prodding). Whatever. Either one would be great, and they'll be paying me more than enough to survive just to speak my native language while I search for a more, shall we say, career-oriented job (oriented towards my career at least). Anthony had the good idea of looking for freelance journalism work while over there, using our bilingualism as an advantage to cover stuff that might require some English skill. This kind of leads to our next topic...

-E3-

Yup, Anthony, Pat, Kyle, and I went to E3 in LA earlier this month to, uh, "cover" it for IUSTV. It was fucking incredible. We got to see the latest and greatest the video game industry has to offer, including the PS3 and Wii (though only Anthony and Kyle got in to actually see/play it). I'm extremely excited about the Wii, the DS Lite, and the plethora of awesome titles coming out for PSP. I, as I think many people were, was thrown by the price tag Sony is currently whispering for the PS3 (somewhere in the neighborhood of 500-600 bucks); that's fucking ri-goddamn-diculous. I honestly think the Wii is going to restore Nintendo to the head of the industry (and good god did they need it), despite the shitty name, especially considering they're shooting for under $200. I won't go into the sweet controller(s) or anything since I 1) didn't actually play it and 2) you can find all kinds of crap about them online in much greater detail than I would ever bother going into. However, I do encourage you to explore. Beyond that, we got to hang out at CCP's sweet ass two-story booth and drink free booze. Huzzah for being an esteemed member of the press. There were also a ton of hot booth girls there promoting various games. The best ones by far, in my opinion, were the SiN Episodes girls. Not only were they gorgeous, but they looked exactly like the characters in the game. Uncanny. My favorite was Cindy Synnett (portraying Jessica Cannon from SiN); she was amazing. On a side note, she writes a blog about gadgets, technology, and whatnot, which of course makes her even more amazing. Check out her blog if you are so inclined...and speak French. Yeah, it's in French. Babblefish of course butchers it (this is not to say it does not perform admirably however), but it will get the point across. I haven't studied/spoken/read/written French in like 8 years, but coincidentally I've been thinking of picking it up again. Well, I've sufficiently digressed from this topic...NEXT

-Boris and other sounds-

Zach, my official music hook-up, has been giving me some fantastic music to listen to lately. He introduced me to this Japanese stoner/drone metal band called Boris, and they have become a fucking obsession for me. Hopefully I'll be going to Cincinnati this summer to see them live. Also, another recent obsession of mine, recently indie-turned-big-label Bloomington band Murder By Death just put out a new CD, and it does not disappoint. Hopefully I'll get to see them one last time before I leave the country.

-The near future and other crap (because I'm tired of making headings)-

I'll be in Bloomington until the end of July when my lease runs out. After that, I guess it's up to Indy for a month or two while I wait to ship out to the land of the rising sun. In the meantime, I'll be fucking around, maybe trying to make some money, maybe posting more often (you have no idea how bored I am), maybe picking up the guitar, French, and photography again...then again maybe I'll just sit on my futon watching TV all day. Eh. Oh, it has come to my attention that I am horribly out of shape (read: fat). This of course means that I'll probably bitch and whine about it, but I am making an effort to get back in shape. Also, after looking at the E3 pictures, I realize that I really need to shave more often cause I look like a douche when I let the beard go.

What else....I guess that's about it for now.