It started when I accidentally brushed against this guy’s foot with mine while standing in the back room of my friendly neighborhood sex bar. I realized I’d done it immediately and had already stepped away. I was about to utter “excuse me” when he whined in his annoying San Francisco perpetual faggot victim voice “you’re on my foot”.

Of course, I was already off his stinky little foot at this point anyway, but I finished my “excuse me” like a good, polite Southern boy. He just glared at me. I was thinking about how this happens to my poor, tortured foot about a dozen times every time I walk into a crowded bar without causing me a moment’s anguish. It sort of comes with the territory in bars, and especially in back rooms. You step on someone, you excuse yourself, they acknowledge, and you both get on with your lives.

Still, he kept glaring like I was some drunk (I wasn’t) sack of shit (I may have been). I looked at him and re-iterated “pardon the FUCK out of me, jackass” and walked away. I heard some whiny comment, and I turned around to tell him “welcome to the back room, where sensibilities occasionally get offended”. Then I wnet home.

Walking down Folsom Street, I started wondering why this had set me off so. Of course he was an idiot, but I’ve dealt with other idiots hundreds of time in the same bar. Why did I snap? And why do I seem to be doing it so often lately? I’ve done it at work, in the car, by email, or wherever I happen to be at the time.

I’m easily annoyed. This is not a major revelation. I’ve always been sort of an impatient grumpy kind of guy, but I usually manage to have a sense of humor about it. Why am I so damned irritable lately? Why am I overreacting to damn near everything?

From careful statistical analysis of my recent blow-ups, I’ve determined that what I’m doing is overreacting to other people who overreact to ME. I’m not sure what this might be a symptom of, but I know it could sure get me hurt if I don’t watch out…

Take the new and improved Planet SOMA Factory tour…

Crimes against nature:

• Canned corn
• Low-flow toilets
• The upcoming “Gilligan’s Island” marathon on Nick-at-Nite

Of course, numbers one and three paint me as a snob and number two makes me look anti-environment. But canned corn is just plain nasty, on the same level as canned squash and canned rutabagas. “Gilligan’s Island” is pure crap, and while I love a lot of crap, I don’t love this particular crap. Number two on the list is, of course, related to crap as well and to the fact that I want said crap to disappear when I ask it to by flushing the crapper.

I guess number two could also be related to “number two”, for those of you who grew up using that particular term. I grew up in a “stinky” house myself. It seved as both noun and verb (“I have to stinky” or “there’s still stinky in the commode”). Most of my friends were from “doo doo” homes. I never met “poop” people until I moved to California, and even then, most of them were from Ohio.

Please don’t inundate me with email about the term you used to describe defecation unless it was really funny…