ShimShim in Seattle

That big thump you might've just heard

2010-07-12T23:46:00.000-07:00

Is my life officially hitting rock bottom.

Jesus, I'm depressed. In most of my 34 years, I've at best managed to score 2/3 in life's necessities, which I define as: solid friends(F), a fulfilling job that pays (J), and a solid girlfriend (G). Aha! Actually we need to add another variable into this, general health and well being. Let's call this one (S) for "sound health" since I'd prefer to reserve H for the sum of all these variables - happiness, which would be represented as a percentage.

With me so far? Bear with me - although I'm Asian I was always pretty lousy at math, but maybe I can try and break this down in quasi-mathematical terms.

This is starting to look like this idea might take a while to fully flesh out, so I'm going to to break what I'll refer to as "Shim's Formula for Happiness in Life" into a multi-part essay which is pretty exciting.

I love this shit! I start writing stuff down and ideas just pop out of nowhere. I just wish I was better at math since that would make this a whole bunch easier.

Anyhow, for now, let me leave you with the following:

H = F + J + G + S

Important to note that the 4 variables defined above are not weighed equally (25/25/25/25). Certain factors are more important than others. This is kind of a bummer, since I'm doing pretty well with J and S. Unfortunately, I think that J+S don't really add up to more than 40% at best. I'll approximate my current level of happiness at around 34%, but will work in forthcoming entries to prove this out.

For now, in order to provide myself and anyone else who might be reading this with the following happiness scale. I'm going to focus on 0-50%, since I'm so rather depressed so therefore don't have the energy to assign happiness tiers to something a bit out of reach:

0-50% on Shim's Formula for Happiness in Life Scale:

0-15% = Get your final affairs in order, and if not a convicted felon and in a state/county/city where the procurement of firearms is highly restricted, purchase said firearm, put down newspaper/plastic bags and a Depends undergarment and commit suicide. If a convicted felon, then need to get a bit creative.

15-25% = Risk of premeditated suicide is lessened dramatically. However, chances of accidental death by overdose due to massive drug/alcohol dependency issues is in on a sliding scale between the 60-90th percentile, assuming 60% at H=0.15, adding 2% to each 0.01/H up to .30.

25-50% = Substance abuse and/or listening to chick folk music or early Depeche Mode/New Order/Howard Jones while simultaneously experiencing chronic spontaneous weeping fits is pretty much the status quo, but you're still marginally functional. Cable tv also helps.

OK, making some progress here! I'm gonna go throw on some tunes, get wasted and stagger into bed. Excited to keep plugging away on this! TTYL!

Author's Disclaimer for all you Mother Teresa types out there:

Listen assholes, I might be depressed and whiny but I have a penchant for hyperbole for comic effect. This entry and any subsequent entries in this blog are not thinly veiled cries for help. I just love to complain. You all know this, sheeit.

Just read Charlie Huston's latest - Sleepless

2010-01-30T01:02:00.000-08:00

Finished the last page of Charlie Huston's latest book Sleepless, which I enjoyed tremendously. Sleepless is an apocalypse-in-progress book set in LA of 2010.

The culprit behind humanity's imminent destruction is a widespread outbreak of a 100% fatal, prion based disease (mad cow 2.0). The kicker to it all is that it takes up to a year to kill you, and it's biggest symptom is that those afflicted can't fall asleep. Ever. For anyone who's suffered insomnia like I have, it sounds like a truly wretched way to go. Naturally, the world is in shambles - total social and economic meltdown. Huston does a great job portraying LA spiralling into the toilet (which neatly takes my mind off of rainy Seattle in the wintertime)

Huston, btw is a really fantastic author - one of my new favorites. He's cranked out 10 books in about 6 years.

There's the Hank Thompson trilogy: hapless NYC East Village bartender agrees to look after his neighbor's cat while neighbor is out of town. Hijinks immediately ensue. You can read the Hank Thompson trilogy as a free set of ebooks. First one is found here.

Then there's the Joe Pitt Case Files - vampire detective noir (and as my coworker Matt always likes to say "Of course it's a noir. It's a vampire book!") set in the NYC present day. The first book "Already Dead" is a free Kindle book too! You can grab that here.

A couple stand alones as well: "The Shotgun Rule" and "The Mystical Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death", which are each a lot different from his previous books.

Note: I just realized that most of the links are to Kindle based books. This isn't a clever way to drive business to the Kindle - it's just how I read my books these days. Go buy the books from a different source in a different format if you wanna. But hey, if you're looking for free shit to read, I just steered you to 4 different books sucka!

Where I feel the Joe Pitt and the Hank Thompson books are pretty similar, The Shotgun Rule, Mystical Arts.., and Sleepless all have a different feel to them. I really enjoy them all, and am really curious to see what Huston will come out with next. Check him out if you're into it. I hope you won't be disappointed.

Wanted: Quality horror novel that I haven't read yet

2009-12-16T22:03:00.000-08:00

I've always been a huge fan of horror books, but I'm inevitably disappointed by whatever I pick up. About 10 years ago you just couldn't find much out there on mainstream bookshelves that weren't written by Koontz or King.

Lately, however, the shelves are full of Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books or Sookie Stackhouse books, and variations on a theme:

Sexy girl has conflicted relationship w/ some sort of monster that's male and good looking, and they proceed to have freaky monster sex on every other page. Hey I love freaky ass sex just as much as the next guy, but there are websites for that.

Fuck that. I want to crack into a book, get sucked into some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario and be scared shitless. So where to look?

Lately I've been Kindle-ing (did I just really say that? Yeah I did) and I've found a couple good ones of note. Let me share them with you.

If a) anyone reads this blog, and/or b) has any additions to the following list, please let me know!

Some oldies but goodies that are relatively recent:

The Terror: Dan Simmons
Drood: Dan Simmons
Among the Living: Timothy Long
The Missing: Sarah Langan
The Taken: Sarah Pinborough

Off to bed right now, but I might update w/ synopses later. No guarantees though!

Hooray for me!

2009-08-24T23:41:00.000-07:00

Well,

It's been quite some time since I've been pounding the keys for anything not work or World of Warcraft related. What can I say, I've been busy.

Anyhow, first entry into my newest life venture - living in Seattle... and cohabitating with my lovely NancyZam to boot!

So where to take the direction of this blog? My random opinions over the perils of too much hot sauce in a Gordo's burrito, drinking too much Red Bull, and sex toys of the 21st century were indeed a whole lot of fun to write about in the past (and still make me smile for sure), but maybe this time around I'll be a bit more personal. Talk about a "day in the life of Shim" every once in a while.

After all, most of my dear dear friends have been left behind in what I call my half-assed Western migration:

Michigan->Massachusetts->Maine->NYC->Aspen->San Francisco->Seattle

And I find that as we all get a bit older, our lives tend to collapse inward somewhat. Most of my friends are now married, having children, and are busy plugging away at busy jobs in a nasty recession.

Let's get together for a laugh and a crazy night out soon! In the meantime, I'll try and keep you interested over here.

OK bedtime for me. More to follow I promise!

-Shim