I feel a little dirty. I accidentally landed on Big Brother tonight while changing channels during a commercial. I saw about thirty seconds of it before I could get back to “King of the Hill”. Now I can no longer say (with a nice blend of smugness and haughtiness) that I missed all the stupid reality shows of the summer of 2000.

More stuff I could do without this week:

• The current SF weather. It’s not all that terribly hot during the day (although it’s hotter than I like), but it’s also not cooling down at night like it should. I am not amused. I am also not sleeping.
• The “Facts of Life” marathon on Nick-at-Nite.
• Bad news about a friend I haven’t talked to in very many years.

Better news: my mom’s coming for a visit in a few weeks. I actually have room for her to stay here now, so I get a full-week visit. I probably won’t take her to the corner sex bar, but it should be fun anyway.

And now for an ethical question (gosh, aren’t we jumping around today?):

Supposing you used to have regular trysts with someone in a tearoom when you were in college. Supposing you had an awful lot of fun together on many occasions, even shared many of the same fetishes, and even made a little video together with your Fisher-Price camcorder. Even though you visited each other’s houses a couple of times, you didn’t officially know each other’s names. It was a tearoom thing, after all.

But supposing you (that would be me) really did know the guy’s name and just happened to do a Google search and find that he’s currently working as a college professor and thus has a very available email address. You’re sure it’s him (there’s a picture).

Do you contact him, offering to send him a copy of the video you promised him ten years ago and telling him you wouldn’t mind making another one the next time you happen to be in the same state?

What would Miss Manners say?

Things I shouldn’t have had to deal with this weekend:

1. Seeing Rick Schroeder wearing leather pants on a VH-1 special. Not only was he making the mistake of sporting such inappropriate trousers, but he was also wearing them with (blecchh…) a wool sweater. That’s so very, very wrong. My pronouncement du jour: from now on, anyone wearing leather pants in my line of sight MUST (a) be a rock star, (b) be performing on stage, and (c) be clad at MOST in a tank top or torn T-shirt. Anyone not meeting all of these simple criteria runs the very real risk of looking like a complete moron. And yes, patrons of queer bars included are included, thanks…
2. Two mildly insomniac nights in a row (no doubt from thinking about people other than Jim Morrison wearing leather pants)…
3. The cute boy with the mischievous sneer at My Place Saturday night who I would have fucked all night had he not, within five minutes of meeting me, gone into way too much detail about the 15-year-old he’d gotten high with and screwed recently at a rave. If he’d saved this revelation until, oh, an hour or two into the conversation, I might possibly have dealt with it, but jeez…
4. The two or three complete strangers who bored me tremendously by babbling on about their assorted recent drug experiences. I don’t get high, I really don’t give a fuck, and I’m not going to give you a knowing, conspiratorial wink no matter how much of a chemical catastrophe you mistakenly believe me to be, OK?
5. The asshole in the BMW (redundant, I know) on Highway 101 today who, as I was passing another car and doing 80MPH, ran directly up my ass, and then, as I signaled and began to move right so he could go around, proceeded to pass me on the right, keeping me from getting out of his way and almost causing a 5-car pileup. And he seemed genuinely shocked when I gave him the finger…
6. The thousands of Silicon Valley wankers who think their ability to afford an overpriced car somehow makes up for their complete inability to drive it correctly…