Why no, this picture has nothing much to do with anything. But wait. Come to think of it, I did have lunch at Burger King today. Maybe it’s a subliminal thing. Or it could just be that I liked the picture…

Either way, lunch at Burger King was about as strenuous as it got today. I’m getting a little better, I guess. I can breathe again, but my ears are still stopped up and I’m still a little achy. All in all, though, things are improving. And my gardenia bloomed.

So in case no one noticed, I uploaded a remodeled Planet SOMA yesterday. There are some subtle page layout changes, and I’ve added a search form on every page. A lot of older pages are now gone, bringing the grand total down to a still unwieldy 420. I’m still playing around, so there may still be a few minor changes. Let me know if you run into problems.

Funny thing, the hit on my front page are way up over the past few weeks. I’d been averaging about 350 a day, while it seems to have blown up to about 425-450 lately. One day last week, almost 500 people came in through the front door. Maybe this “hands off” policy, where I’ve only been updating the journals, is a good thing. Odder still, though, is that overall site traffic has stayed pretty stable, despite all the additional hits on the front page.

Now that you’re thoroughly bored, I’ll sign off, so I can attempt the sleep I didn’t get last night. Whatever I have, it’s starting to grate on every remaining nerve in my body.

Interviewed. Me. Imagine that. And with only one inconsequential misinterpretation regariding hits…

Still life with Kleenex, Alka Seltzer, and orange juice (Me, 1996)

So the time has finally come. I’ve managed to develop that annual nastiest cold in the world. Maybe even the worst cold in a couple of years. Oddly enough, this one seems to have moved from my chest to my head, instead of vice versa which is my usual pattern. It kept me away from my part-time job today (like that’s particularly difficult…) but it didn’t stop me from looking like a heroin addict at a meeting about some freelance work.

What really sucks about being sick in San Francisco in February, though, is having to drag your ass out in the freezing cold and pouring rain to move your car on street cleaning night. Of course, just about anyplace else, the cold would be colder and the rain would be harder, so I guess I shouldn’t bitch.

But I’m sick and I’m cranky. I’ll bitch if I goddamn well please. Why should this be different from ny other day?

Things I love today:

• A Raisin in the Sun.
• Dreamweaver.

Things I hate today:

• • Kleenex rash.

• That useless, tough, taste-free corned beef brisket I bought at Safeway this weekend.
• The aroma of that homeless guy who sat down next to me at lunch today.

I didn’t think it could get much more surreal than hearing “Stairway to Heaven” on a pipe organ in a pizza parlor on Friday night. I was wrong.

I was changing channels tonight and something caught my eye on one of the local PBS stations: a rerun of “The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show” from about 1961. The strange special effects in the first musical number were bizarre enough, with singers “floating” against a blue sky background (body parts kept disappearing). The “Peanuts” opening sequence as a little odd as well.

Midway through the show, though, came the piece de resistance: Ernie Ford and Tony Bennett and a full orchestra singing Hank Williams songs. This was about a strange as it gets. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” with a horn section was followed by “Jambalaya” with both the horn section and a collection of about 15 perky white singers in evening wear. All in brilliant, headache-inducing color on semi-demagnetized 2-inch videotape.

I sort of hoped it would all end in a commercial for Martha White Flour, but it didn’t…

Things I love today:

• Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
• Breyer’s Natural Strawberry Ice Cream.
• Cheap cigarettes in San Bruno.
• This article on the launch of Microsloth Winblows 2000. Funny…

Things I hate today:

• This chest cold, which is showing signs of getting nastier and nastier (no doubt spurred on by cheap cigarettes in San Bruno).
• Hot, sticky weather in February.
• Waiting until the last minute to pay my car insurance and finding AAA closed for the holiday.