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It might end January 15. I'll explain when I have a real keyboard. In the meantime, I'm collecting old games for online sale. Today I cleaned out a wholesaler's supply of 20 Um Jammer Lammy and 3 Sonic the Hedgehog 3. All are factory sealed.

well i will be thinking of you on the 15th of january when im eatting my birthday cake

good luck

Mine's on the 14th

Selling online may work out for you well-enough man, especially if you can clear out wholesalers cheap, haha. Best of luck with it!

Vance wrote:It might end January 15. I'll explain when I have a real keyboard. In the meantime, I'm collecting old games for online sale. Today I cleaned out a wholesaler's supply of 20 Um Jammer Lammy and 3 Sonic the Hedgehog 3. All are factory sealed.

I'll take Um Jammer Lammy off your hands. How much do you want? Paypal okay?

Does fifteen sound halfway reasonable?

Vance wrote:Does fifteen sound halfway reasonable?

Sounds pretty good.

PM me your address. I'll cover five bucks worth of shipping and let you know.

Okay, probably spending a bit too much money... the landlord freaked out on me, so I yelled at her to get out of my store. The next morning she asked me to leave and offered the security deposit back. Nobody believes she really intends to pay me, citing that she's Taiwanese (can't claim to know the sterotype) and a known money hoarder and tax dodger. Me, I figure I can make a royal pain of myself if she doesn't. If she does pay me, I'm out of here and on the road in January. If not, I hunker down and burn off the two months and leave on March 15th. It takes three months to get an eviction done in LA, and I KNOW she doesn't want to spend any more money than necessary. I have faith that I can impress that upon her.

I've been using a combination of freeweight stacked over a bin of pachinko balls to do my weightlifting, and a Fist of the North Star arcade machine for upper body/cardio (that thing is BRUTAL, I cut my hand on it) so I plan on looking like Henry Rollins by mid-January. This is almost purely a pipe dream.

I have now purchased about 40 NES games, a few of those actually being SNES. Mostly I cherry-picked the very best, plus a lot of 32 games that are still in the box. I also recently took a trade-in of 39 PS2 games and had to go pork a new shelf that the video store was tossing out to hold them. Mostly middling and okay stuff with a few standouts. It's getting hard to move around in here.

I've decided that the best course of action if I go online (and perhaps eventually reopen in Tampa) is to primarily become a nostalgia store. Wall-to-wall NES, PS1, Turbo-Grafx, NeoGeo, etc etc. There's a big shift toward nostalgia at the moment. Look online and most sellers are concentrating on moving classics for cheap rather than putting up more recent stock. Oh, I'll still dabble in new releases, but very very cautiously. Hell, I have a direct mail relationship with a national distributor and I can't complain about paying less for new games that show up at my door on release day or sooner.

I kind of need that security deposit, though... I don't make rent in a month anymore, even just burning out stock and not reordering. I can't really afford to leave this stuff with friends and ship it out... I don't know, renting a truck and driving cross country costs over a grand, so maybe I would do better just taking Greyhound. Oh right, I'm also afraid of flying. HA!

EDIT: Renting a truck is now more like $2,300. Nevermind.

The landlord served a three day pay or quit notice. I've been trying to get a friend over here to witness the agreement w/ contract to let us out and pay back the deposit, since I trust this woman about as far as I can piss. Of course, she served it herself, in violation of California law... I'm not SURE if a pay or quit notice falls under that law, though. It's mostly just a "pay up or I'll try to evict you!" paper.

The reason I haven't paid her is that I wanted to get a witness to not only try to oversee the contract in case she refused, but also to oversee the rent payment. The old bat always wants cash, which helps in her "not paying taxes" thing. Well, I need a paper trail now, so I'm going to offer her a check. If she refuses to take it, she's the one violating the lease.

Of course, there's the fact she comes in here all the time while I'm gone in defiance of the law and the contract (a landlord gets one mandatory inspection a month and must give 24 hours heads up) but she also left the door unlocked one time! But that's not really enough to take to court.

I do hope that all the precautions are unnecessary and that she coughs that shit up. This move is already a logistical nightmare enough without that. I'm probably going Greyhound so moving all this stuff is problematic.

It's all a big damn headache. No more store for at least three years, I just want to grind some money out of the big American corporate machine while doing the minimum work possible and have some quiet anonymity.

Okay, since I'm hard up for the cashes, I'll start listing specifics here. If you see something you like, let me know. I'll be putting more stuff up online later, but here's some of the better stuff from the PS2 haul:

Castle Shikigami 3 $9
Devil May Cry $8
Devil May Cry 3 (non-special edition) $9
DOA 2 Hardcore $17
Final Fantasy 7 Dirge of Cerberus $15
Final Fantasy 10 $10
Fullmetal Alchemist 1 $10
Fullmetal Alchemist 2 (includes bonus anime episode DVD) $10
God of War 2 (has bonus DVD) $15
Guilty Gear X $16
Gungrave $10
Jade Cocoon 2 $20
Kingdom Hearts $15
Kingdom Hearts 2 $15
Onimusha 3 $8
Prince of Persia Warrior Witihin $15
Resident Evil Code Veronica X $8
Shadow of the Colossus black label $13
Shinobi $10
Tenchu Wrath of Heaven $12

I'll be posting under the marketplace after this. Just wanted to put this out there in the open for now.

WOW Vance, your land lady is witch with a capital "B"! I wish I had storage space to help you out but I don't even have enough room for everything I own.

I hope it all works out for you.

The landlady would be perilously in danger of me being spiteful. You call it the IRS in the US don't you? Like the Inland Revenue service in the UK? Or Tax Bastards as i think they are officially known globally. The only organisation where being raped/stabbed would be a viable alternative to their services or rather, their investigation. They are just a phone call away. It's your civic duty remember

Reminds me of the time I called the Social Benefits Fraud Office on one of the congregation of my parents church. This guy claimed benefits but worked too. He was just a lazy stupid blessed with a ugly fat daughter old creep. So anyway, me and my brother were carrying this refrigerator into his house, because the Lord had said he needed it, and my parents didn't want it, and so, while we struggled this damn thing up the drive and into his house, we looked up for inspiration. Whether it was lord that put a halo round it or the sweat from my brow did it, I don't know, but this scrounger had a satellite TV dish. We didn't even have a colour TV on the other hand. ...Two days later: "Hello, I'd like to report a benefit fraud..." The awesome thing about it was, he was the focus of the pray group meeting the following week, while fraud investigator parked outside. "...Sid is going through a difficult time lord..." (me and my brother wet ourselves...)

On my final note: good luck mate. I'm sure you will be fine. It's not quite a Christmas story being evicted from a L.A. video game store just before Christmas by a mad Taiwanese tax evading bint, but it's damn close. I think you're sound guy, it'll work out for the best. Just remain calm and carry on

Also, steer clear of mad smelly nerd with mistletoe. You're almost safe.

Merry Christmas!

Right now the plan is to push the whole thing as far as I can to convince her she wants me to have the money to get me the hell out of there. I'm seeing if some friends have a stereo and I will blast Anacrusis' seminal album Manic Impressions all night (she lives directly above the shop and Manic Impressions is pretty much the only hard metal I find pleasant thanks to actual musician skill). If I stay, I will ride the rent cycle as far as possible, five days late before late fees... remember that she went ballistic after two days!

I'm playing with the idea of completely littering the interior, but I don't want to chase off customers in the meantime.

In the meantime, I'll open a dedicated store section in the marketplace if that's okay with you guys. If there's anything you want, please augment my poor ability to pay the rent until things work out. I'll skimp on the shipping charges as much as possible.

video this for f**k sake. With the added bravado YouTube fame will bring, in the heat of debate, you can ask her if she will 'love you long time'. They love that. [cough]

The landlady signed off on it. We practically had to bully her into it, but I'm still surprised things went so well. Turtle and Luis are getting treated to all you can eat shabu shabu in a couple of weeks.

I'm getting the entire three thousand back, which will be needed! A few volunteers in Tampa are going to hold onto some boxes, so for right now I have to prioritize what I'll send now and what I'll send later.

My friend Mach (short for Macho, his legal name) said he was "pretty f'n sure" he could get me a job with Bright House, probably setting up cable with my ass crack hanging out. I'm trying to time it so that I can start working days after I'm back.

In the meantime, I'll be couch surfing and hoping I can find a good house to rent in my sunny home suburb of Northdale. Haven't lived there since I was 16 and it was a rather ideal place to grow up.

Feeling stoked, but intimidated by the next few weeks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPgWLnXFx6E

I used the old store name for some reason.

How much for the cranberry sierra mist?

Stupid cravings...

Because we're mature.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcPnFqbgCLw

Vance wrote:Because we're mature.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcPnFqbgCLw

3DO Road Rash, the facebook years.

What I'm really not going to miss are certain selections of customer. Namely most of them. In my time I've had people perpetually attempting to purchase games, burn them, then scratch them up and return them (or substitute their damaged copies), people who would NOT give up on haggling no matter what (I'm glaring at Korea for the most part), really really obvious shoplifting attempts (whereupon I go over and staple things while looming over them), but one of the most obnoxious falls into several easy categories... the Talkers.

Talker #1 is harmless enough. They want to talk about their gaming experience and know what you like. It's easiest to put up with these people when they're mentally crippled because hey, it brings them an honest joy. The problem is that most of them aren't retarded, they're just stupid. The simple version: Unless you are certifiably bright, you're saying nothing new to the advanced game store clerk, ever, and that gets annoying the longer it stretches out. Still, this is the category most likely to purchase games, so it's pretty tolerable on the whole.

Talker #2 is f^@*ing obnoxious. Definitely not buyers, they just need to impress upon their friends or trophy asian girlfriend (PROTIP: Don't bring them to Little Tokyo. We're all laughing at you) how much they know by spouting off observations and facts, most of them wrong.

EXAMPLE, COMMON: "Wow, it's mostly old games in here!" as I stand in front of the massive wall of Wii, PSP, and PS3, glaring.

Sub-category of Talker #2 is tragically increasing in numbers, the Criminal Friend. I.E. "Don't buy that, I'll mod your console for you." This person is most likely to get tossed out after two tries because the first time I tend to aim at the wall when tossing.

Any category of Talker is likely to engage the store clerk in a discussion of piracy, cementing the whole "stupid" thing. One person actually seemed kind of cool until he said "You seem cool, so I'll let you know I have everything modded and I never buy games. I only buy PS3 games, and when they mod that I won't buy those anymore."

WHAM. "Sorry, I'm a bit blind in my left eye. I'm sure I'll get you out the door properly this time." WHAM.

True story.

What else, what else... oh yeah, I honestly couldn't tell if this guy was retarded or just really really really self-entitled, which is a common disease in Los Angeles to the point where people are so crude that you can offer to help an old lady put her groceries on the counter and she'll think you're going to rape her.

Anyway, the guy had already asked for a 50% discount or something ridiculous like that, and I mentioned to the group that I was closing down.

"YOU CAN GIVE ALL THIS STUFF TO ME!"

Blink blink. It sounds like a stupid joke. His face was honest and expectant though.

Me, to his friend: "Seriously, is he retarded?"

okay, so I googled 'self-entitled', because, you know, I wasn't sure. Seems to me only middle-class, middle-aged people with two-tone hair and red-or-dead square glasses and an iPhone welded to their personality deficient skulls, suffer from this so far in the UK. Basically, my own demographic. I just hate them, they really are bloody irritating.

...and it really is Viper vs Mongoose. (i'm Mongoose obviously) I have a mobile phone jammer (that I don't use because it's illegal to do so (cough)) that brings endless joy in Starbucks or the train or wherever these people are found. Also, due to fundamental insecurities in bluetooth communications I send them messages completely anonmously.Things like "You are ugly" or "your hair is shit" or "your voice makes me wee blood" or "your suit is cheap" something to ruin their day. They all have this Self-Entitlement attitude. And I have been at war with them since 2005.

..."Self Entitlement". Thanks (made my day learning that )

BTW: Do they still have that thing in the U.S. where you can broadcast your own TV show. Community TV, or free TV, or something? Because, Vance, mate, you wasting this gold mine posting it here. Angy Video Game Salesman or something

Interestingly enough, some customers were setting up a public access (it's typically called public access and is usually mandated by law in many cities) show about anime and offered me a five minute spot in each episode.

Here's the thing; In Los Angeles, we had investigative news amateurs on public access who did a much finer job than the mainstream press at sniffing out corruption and reporting on the shady city government dealings. We had a damn homeless guy named Zuma Dogg who would go to town hall meetings and speak on these issues.

Obviously it had to go. The mayor and his staff rescinded the laws providing that public access channels must be made available as a form of public forum, and turned the channels into more city hall camera channels. If you don't have this in England, it's basically just a fixed camera that sits at a distance while the council does... whatever. Hears people out, goes on break, sits there and shuffles.

Moving out of the room upstairs tomorrow, so I'm trying to move everything into the store tonight. Started a bit late. Well, oops.

And I call it a room instead of an apartment for a reason. It's a room, about two and a half times the floorspace of the bed's size. Think about that. There's two bathrooms to a floor and two showers to a floor, one shower on each floor is broken.

For that, I was paying $500. Used to be $600, but she gave me a whooptie doodly break on the rent for also renting the store.

And in what shall certainly not be her last stupid act, she snooped into my room today... again... and I can always tell because she locks both locks when she leaves. I only lock the top one.

I will not miss this place.