Journals : 2002 : February

Things I love today:

It's time for bed...

7 February 2002 | Link this

Two episodes of "Family Guy" in one night. I think it's a plot to divert attention from the fact that it's been cancelled. Again. For something like the fourth time...

Having always had the utmost respect for obsessive nerds (you should see some of the Filemaker databases I've created), this site gets my highest praise, even though they missed that "Archie, Sabrina, and the Groovie Goulies" vortex. Thanks to Sarah for that link...

OK, I've been working ever since I got home from work (what?), and now I'm gonna go watch a movie on my big new TV and rest up for my much-anticipated trip to the land of Mark (and his new site) tomorrow. It's been 11 days; advance rest may be very much required. So yes, this is the next in a series of half-assed journal entries rather than the long-promised interesting one. Sorry...

I want meat loaf and I want it now...

8 February 2002 | Link this

This is the second time this week I've had a dream which involved me being in high school. Last night's centered around the first day of the semester. I was in math class. The teacher was trying to explain some obscure concept with plates of rather unpleasant vegan food which, for some reason, we all kept eating before she could make her point. All the while, I was trying to keep the attention of some girl I had the hots for...

Y'know, I'm pretty sure I don't even want to know what that whole thing symbolized...

• Firsts for me. Lots of firsts. And several realizations as well. More about that later. It's been kind of a season for realizations. And firsts.
• Los Creepers and Fastback 69. Yay.
• Is there ever NOT a wreck on I-580 in Livermore?
• I have become a designated driver.
• A really nice Mies van der Rohe book for 90 cents is a wonderful thing.
• I'm 37 1/2 years old (as of today, which I forgot until now) and I feel about 13, except when I'm taking my pills.
• Why yes, the left lane IS designed for passing and not for cruising along at your own pace. Thanks for noticing.
• Should I be concerned that I've spent more time in a bar 180 miles from my house than in any of the ones in my neighborhood lately?
• Dimanche Gras, anyone?
• I think I could probably live in Baltimore if I had to.
• If I were a mystery shopper, the Burger King in Modesto would have failed miserably tonight.
• Fabuloso comes in FOUR colors now?

OK, that probably made no sense at all. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. Right now, I'm teetering between happy, goofy, and comatose, so I'm going to bed...

12 February 2002 | Link this

There's a new essay over at Planet SOMA. Imagine that. It was inspired, as so many of them are, by a really asinine editorial in the Chron. Look for more Fresno with pictures on one of the two sites, maybe later tonight...

But now, I'm gonna have a nice bowl of Cocoa Pebbles...

13 February 2002 | Link this

 

No more New York Pizza. An email correspondent today advised me that it burned down on Monday night...

For those of you not in the know (which would be about 98% of you), New York Pizza was probably my favorite drinking establishment in Greensboro. It was a great place: a pizza joint with bar on a corner of Tate Street, UNCG's pathetic excuse for a college strip. It was dark and dumpy, it had a great jukebox, the pitchers were cheap, and there was always plenty of greasy stomach padding to be found...

But the best thing about the place was the crowd. It was one of those rare places which small cities seem to generate more readliy than big ones: an all-purpose joint where college kids, trailer trash, musicians, homosexuals, and burnouts sat and drank and talked and smoked. Usually with no problems, and often with a great deal of interaction among the different groups...

It was not a trendy place; in fact, it was little more than a dump, but it was usually a far more pleasant place to be than Greensboro's dismal, tight-assed, disco queer bars or its assorted fratboy and redneck hangouts. In recent years, it had become the only bar left on Tate Street, not so much through gentrification, but more through the sanitizing influences of the nearby university, the fascist College Hill neighborhood organization, and a higher drinking age...

I'm told they'll rebuild, but I have my doubts. Even if they do, it won't be the same...

14 February 2002 | Link this

Happy Valentine's Day to my favorite travelling companion. I kind of like this path. And a happy one as well to all you onlookers whose attention, if not always approval, I apparently crave...

15 February 2002 | Link this

Dinner with Dan at the new In-n-Out Burger, followed by dessert at the semi-new Krispy Kreme. Cheap DVDs at Target and Tower. KBHK has cycled back into older (in other words, good) episodes of The Simpsons. A full Safeway Select Diet Grapefruit Soda in the refrigerator...

How could it get any better?

Oh yeah. I get to leave for Fresno in about thirteen hours to spend a belated Valentine's Day weekend with Mark. Can't think of anything I'd rather be doing right now. And I mean right now. Not in seventeen hours...

Tonight's good mood has caused me to substitute this journal entry for the already-written (but never posted) "PG&E sucks and so does Muni" journal entry. Look for it at a later date, since I don't envision my distaste for either of these two institutions going away anytime soon...

18 February 2002 | Link this

Home from a slightly-belated Valentine's Day weekend in Fresno with Mark. It was every bit as romantic and wonderful as I wanted. You know, of course, that I've scored the best boy in the world. And for those of you who are totally cheesed out by all MY mushiness lately too, well, tough. It's probably gonna get worse...

But not tonight. There's nothing but sleep in my immediate future. Especially since I left my toothbrush at Mark's and don't much feel like going to the all-night Walgreen's at this point...

I feel a spurt of updates coming tomorrow (later today?) for the holiday, but I ain't promising...

18 February 2002 Later | Link this

Sometimes you get email which is so ludicously idiotic that it would just be wrong somehow not to share it.

Background: I got a message this afternoon at Planet SOMA from someone wanting to sell me live video streams of my "club". Keep in mind that this guy had to navigate through my contact page in order to send it out, and still managed not to figure out or care that (a) I'm not a "club", and (b) I eat spammers and other idiots for breakfast if I'm in a suitably playful mood...

So I sent a slightly sarcastic note via my disposable Yahoo account, and informed him that anyone who billed himself a "web developer" should probably have the good sense and attention to detail to realize he was mailing his message to an individual and not a nightclub. And that anyone who spoke English (as he presumably did) would have seen the multiple spam notices as well...

So he wrote back with one of the most classic lines I've read this week: "why are you listed as a club on yahoo if you're not a club?"

That explains it. My site comes up when you do a search on "clubs". Therefore I must be one, right? He essentially told me that, since Yahoo "said" I was a club, I was one (whether or not I believed it or had been notified of my new career). Web developer my ass. I wouldn't hire this guy to do yard maintenance. Oooh. Just what I need: a web developer who doesn't even know how a search engine works...

All the same, I'd have just let it drop if he'd just said "I screwed up and I'm sorry". But no. He had to be an active, aggressive idiot. Which has qualified Erik the webmaster for my semi-dormant "idiot of the month" award...

Anyway, Sarah's back online, Becky's happy again, Mark's done some spiffy re-tooling, I got a lot of work done today, and electric blue squeezable Parkay was on sale at Safeway tonight. Life is good, all in all...

19 February 2002 | Link this

As luck would have it, I managed to flee the city for Bear Rendezvous weekend and not even realize I'd been smart enough to do so...

This is one of those four annual events where it's usually much more pleasant just to leave town for the weekend, the others being Pride Week (month? eternity?) and the Dore Alley and Folsom Street Fairs. Nothing per se against that whole "bear thing", but it seems to me it's just another way of defining oneself based on sexual orientation rather than on any actual personality traits...

And, contrary to popular opinion, it's no less contrived than the leather scene, the circuit scene, the pageant scene, and all those other assorted scenes I find a little tedious. To paraphrase the immortal words of Lisa Simpson, all those big trucks and big bellies are very daring and rebellious. In a conformist sort of way...

Nothing against big bellies either, by the way, as I possess a substantial one myself, sculpted through rigorous training with Funyuns, miscellaneous pork products, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It's nice that us big fat hairy guys can find love too, and yes, people gravitate toward what interests them sexually. But is it really necessary to pretend that a "community" exists because of it?

Remember when the fabled path to enlightenment used to be about "finding oneself" rather than about "finding one's community"? Those of us in the fast-growing contrarian individualist community do. And we're gonna have us a rally soon, dammit...

21 February 2002 | Link this

Ever have one of those stretches where you feel just sort of generally crappy for a couple of weeks and you're not sure why? Like you're threatening to come down with some sort of bug or something, but it never really happens? I'm having one of those; I'm sort of tired and cranky and lethargic, and not feeling at all creative...

Maybe it will improve when Mark arrives tomorrow night; he has that effect on me. I just hope he doesn't run away from me screaming in terror before this effect kicks in...

I think what's called for now, though, is ice cream. And maybe something in a Walt Disney movie. For some reason, I'm craving Bedknobs and Broomsticks tonight...

22 February 2002 | Link this

I missed it. Yesterday was the five-year anniversary of the relationship between me and my current vehicle. It's been a good car; it's taken me cross-country a couple of times, not to mention on numerous other road trips, especially in the past few months. And it's coped well with life in the hostile environs of San Francisco, where I'm regarded as subhuman by some just for owning it...

Here's to five more years with my indestructible Corolla. Given my heavily-mortgaged heart and thyroid, it may HAVE to be five more years...

As much as I believe that "warm and sunny" is an overrated weather pattern, it sure is nice to have the windows open so I can air out the house today. Looks like a good weekend for Mark's visit. Maybe we'll have to shag out on the deck...

24 February 2002 | Link this

I hate Sunday nights. Just when I'm getting used to being curled up, comfy, and cozy from the weekend, I don't get to be anymore. It's right about now that those 189 miles seem like about a million...

But now I'm sort of grinning. And sort of tired. And sort of pondering putting that extra blanket on the bed to compensate over the next twelve days...

 

It was a good weekend: pizza and Quiz Show with Mark, Dan, and Jamie on Friday night; record stores, subways, Escape from New York, and Ethiopian food with Mark on Saturday; and the post Chinese New Year street festival in Chinatown today. And then there was this morning's blue breakfast, but that's a story for another time when there are pictures...

Wow. Tad's has a website now. Cool. And it's less than six months 'til this year's birthday bash. Mark your calendars...

26 February 2002 | Link this

So I'm in line behind these stupid white people at the Burger King tonight. I bet you've been behind the same couple. They're upper middle class and vaguely overeducated Baby Boomers, they're eating fast food on a lark, and they just don't get the concept. Especially the "fast" part...

These are the sort of people who mull over every item on the menu, pondering its relative fat content. As the line gets longer and longer, they ask the poor guy behind the counter about the ingredients on every sandwich, how the onion rings are cooked, whether the chicken is a frozen patty, etc...

The husband can't quite figure out what a combo meal is. First he just wants a sandwich. Then he decides to get a drink. Then he goes for broke, makes the cashier void one more line item, and orders the whole combo. He asks if the drink is included and then changes his mind twice when ordering said beverage. I'm amazed at this point that he doesn't ask for a wine list...

Finally they finish and get their food. Four subsequent customers manage to order their food in half the time it took this one couple. I am not surprised, somehow, to notice they drive away in a Volvo. I'm even less surprised when they try to turn into oncoming traffic on a one-way street on the way out...

27 February 2002 | Link this

In the spirit of adding new content without having actually to write anything new, I've added a few jounal entries from the past year which, for one bad reason or another, never made it to the front page. Some of them were rants, some were updates for which I didn't yet have pictures, etc. Just to make it fun, I'm not going to say where they are either...

You can also see some recent pictures which, for one reason or another, never made it to their respective places in journal entries. Of course, the biggest reason is that I didn't get around to capturing the pictures until the journal entries were already way old. I'll probably move them where they need to go soon...

• Working on a new site, and maybe doing some preliminary work on another new one too.
• Shooting a solution containing boric acid directly into my right eye. Several times.
• Catching up on long-neglected email.
• Laundry and severe spring cleaning.
• A blood-letting tomorrow so that I can learn that my condition hasn't really changed much since the last one.
• Defnitely a movie break on Saturday night.
• Popping downstairs and smashing in some idiot's windshield if his car alarm doesn't shut the fuck up really soon.

28 February 2002 Later | Link this

Oh God. I'm Charlotte Flax from "Mermaids" too. There has to be some significance here, but since I've never seen the movie, I won't take a stab at what it might be...

Which Winona Are You?

Thanks to Mark via Sarah. Or vice versa. Y'know, you two really need to meet at some point...

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