Begin Purification.

Unemployment sucks. Well, no it doesn’t. Not really. Now I have time to do the things I daydreamed about doing while I was at my job. So now it’s time to do them. And just so we’re clear, what are these things that I would rather have been doing while I was wearing a lab coat? OK, well there are things I want to do and things I need to do.

The things I want to do are: 1) work on the screenplays/stories I’ve been toying around with for the past year; 2) learn how to play the guitar that I bought almost two years ago; 3) play video games; 4) catch up with my Netflix queue; 5) watch porn; 6) get caught up with my new reading hat*.

The things I need to do are: 1) buy wall mount shelves; 2) sort through my magazines; 3) get some sort of appropriate storage for the bare hard drives that are laying around; 4) set up my new laptop as a Final Cut Pro/Adobe Creative Suite station; 5) set up my Mac Mini as a proper media server; 6) cancel my magazine subscriptions; 7) take care of a few loose ends that are still hanging on from LA; 8.) install wall mount shelves.

It took me a week to finally send my passport in to be renewed, but I’m glad I got that taken care of so I can have it in the event I decide to go to Australia in January. My plan to visit NY in December was effectively castrated. Perhaps I’ll visit in January the week before Obama’s inauguration. I think that might be a better idea than visiting during the holiday season. Plus it’ll be closer to my birthday time, and I can celebrate my birthday in NY and treat myself to a tour of Alex Grey’s gallery, which I totally missed out on the last time I was there. I hope Net of Being is still on display. What else do I want to do in NY? See a few musuems (MOMA, Natural History, Ellis Island), see the Statue of Liberty, visit Ground Zero, jog/do yoga in Central Park, visit Columbia and NYU. I think I can do all that in a week. Definitely have to play video games with Saro too. We always talk about that shit, but I don’t think I’ve ever played with the guy.

I gave myself a week from today to write the script for the Drunk Darth Vader Attack sketch. That’s going to be my project for the week. In addition I’ll add one thing from the “need to do” list. Let’s see. Hmmmm. Buy wall mount shelves. Yeah. That’s a good one. Note that “buy” and “install” regarding the shelves are two separate action items.

Yes, I realize that this was neither acidic, nor a dream. But you have to write a lot of nothing before you can get something.

* I took most of the books off my shelf that I’ve already read, leaving behind the ones I haven’t read. I then wrote down the titles of each on little strips of paper and placed the strips in a hat. You get the idea. The first name drawn was Stephen King’s “The Stand.”

Unemployment: Day 1

I woke up at 7:30am after going to bed at 3:30am. I was up late cleaning up the mess I had made from replacing my old desk with the new one. I wanted to sell the old desk on Craigslist, but received some startling news last night while moving the pieces around and ended up breaking it. BYAAAH!

Since I had no job to go to, I went back to bed and awoke again at 10am. That seems a more reasonable hour at which to wake up on your first day of unemployment. Although I don’t want to make a habit of it as I’m used to waking up early in general.

I don’t want to waste the days on the internet and I’m going to make sure I get every last detail taken care of before the big move. I was supposed to get my passport renewed today but I didn’t do that. I will do so tomorrow. First I must get a haircut.

I met my friend and former co-worker at the gym at 12:30 and we did our usual workout routine. I added another pull-up to my set. Three weeks ago I was only able to do one and now can do seven. So I’m seeing results. I just wish they were more visible.

My mom wanted a comic book box to put her magazines in so I stopped at Treasure Island on the way home and picked up a few boxes as I needed some as well, along with volume 5 of Y The Last Man. I haven’t been to Treasure Island in over a year and a half. It felt strange being back in the comic store that I used to spend so much time in.

I came home and started on the mess in my room again. I managed to clear off half of the stuff on my bed so now I have room to sleep on it and no longer have to sleep on the floor or the couch. I also set aside the stuff I want to place on the wall mount shelves that I’m going to get from Ikea. God, I hate Ikea. I really don’t want to go there and get shelves. Maybe I’ll go somewhere else. All I need are a few black shelves and wall mounts. I’m determined to give my National Geographic copies to Yu-ting. That will clear one whole shelf so I can put some other stuff on it.

So it was a rather productive day. I treated myself to another viewing of Dhoom 2. Once my dinner settles I’m going to squeeze in a session of Power Yoga and then play Heavenly Sword until I fall asleep.

Day 2 Preview: Get haircut, renew passport, go to Guess, go to Ikea or some other furniture store, and clean underside of bed.

Fuck Dhalsim.

I’ve been taking Power Yoga for about 3 months now. I’m really enjoying it, although every time I stick my ass in the air for downward facing dog, I can’t help but be taken back to 6th grade. I had just made a new group of friends at my new elementary school and I had accompanied them to Cue Connection for the first of what would be many sessions of Street Fighter II. This was my first experience with the game and as I scrolled through the characters, I landed on Dhalsim, an obviously Indian looking witch doctor. Being Indian, I chose him, proud that my ethnicity had made its way into such a high profile and popular video game. My pride quickly turned to dismay as I soon found that he’s quite possibly one of the worst fighters in the game, like ever. All the other fighters were cool and Dhalsim was, well, lame. He had two flame attacks which were paralyzing so that was actually kinda cool assuming you were able to pull them off, but his regular attacks were very strange. His limbs would stretch across the screen and while it seemed cool at first (Oh cool I can stand across the screen and still hit you!) it actually turned out to be not very useful. I soon found out that his “fighting style” was supposed to be Yoga. The developers at Capcom can suck my long one because Yoga is not a fighting style. Nor does it allow you to stretch your limbs like some sort of poor man’s Mr. Fantastic. That day I vowed to myself I would never ever go near a yoga class. Imagine being the new Indian kid at a school, and the only other exposure they have to anything Indian is Dhalsim. No wonder it was so hard to fit in. Everyone was probably wondering why I wasn’t wearing a necklace of skulls around my neck and breathing fire.

The instructor shakes me out of my flashback by telling us to bring our left legs forward for a crescent lunge and I find myself wondering the same thing.