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September 2001

Lunch wih Sarah

Nice belated birthday lunch with Sarah today. It would have been even nicer if I hadn’t been having one of my “all this medication sucks and I feel like shit and who really needs a properly-functioning thyroid gland or heart anyway, dammit” days…

Speaking of which, it’s time for my evening pills…

Me and Crowds

There are many things I was ambivalent about as a youth which I’ve learned to appreciate with age: collard greens, 1950s pop standards, etc…

There is one thing I’ve grown to hate more than anything else as I’ve gotten older: large crowds. Crowding has never been one of my favorite phenomena, but I used to put up with them occasionally if the event in question was worth the effort. No more…

It’s not that I have a phobia; I don’t get panic attacks or anything like that. I just get REALLY annoyed in crowds. I want to start shoving and elbowing when the flow of (pedestrian) traffic won’t move at a reasonable pace. And I start finding something to hate about everyone who gets in my way, or even looks like he MIGHT get in my way…

Crowds in bars are the worst, of course. Drunk idiots are statistically more likely to stumble into one’s path than sober idiots. And the M.O., at least in queer bars, seems to be “find the place where you can do the most damage to traffic flow and stand there with 12 of your closest friends for an hour or two”…

Of course, it’s no trick to get me annoyed anyway. I’m perpetually irritable and I’m quite comfortable with this fact, thanks. And my problem with crowds probably stems from the fact that I’m just not a “people person”. In other words, I tend to expect the worst out of most people I encounter, rather than the best. This tactic results in much less disappointment and even the occasional pleasant surprise…

Oddly enough, there was a time (say, 1985) when I was comparatively outgoing and even tolerated crowds pretty well. Then I spent ten years in customer service jobs and it was all over for me. I learned to see the worst in people simply because they all seemed so damned willing to show it. I haven’t waited on a customer in a retail store in over four years and I still haven’t recovered…

I may never go to a bar on a Saturday night, a sporting event, a parade, or a street fair again, and I really don’t think I’ll be missing all that much. Large crowds have a tendency to gather primarily to do things I’m not much interested in doing anyway…

Coming soon: why I hate crowds of Sodomites even more than I hate regular, all-purpose crowds…

2 September 2001

I was in one of my casserole moods tonight. Recipe available upon request…

Best song heard in a drinking establishment (where I wasn’t drinking) this weekend: “I Love You” by Yello…

Randomly Wednesday

Oh fiddlesticks. I forgot to go to Burning Man…

Today’s exciting new drug is Rythmol. Yes, I know it sounds like it should be an ineffective birth control pill. It’s not. Trust me…

Strangeness du jour: having two WB affiliates in one TV market. It’s just temporary, until KNTV signs on with NBC in January, but I may live in the only part of the country where “Dawson’s Creek” has a better coverage area than “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”…

Is “fiddlesticks” two words or one?

Hell

For anyone who may have had his irony detector disabled yesterday, the answer is no. I was not really upset about missing Burning Man. I’ve already spent two days this year in the hospital with tubes sticking out of my arm; that’s quite enough fun for one year, thanks. Adding the joy of coping with annoying, smelly people on drugs in the middle of a desert might result in a pleasure overload. Really…

Try to Remember

Try to remember the kind of September…

  

September 1981: I’m a senior in high school, and I’m in the midst of ditching my last real “girlfriend”, working part-time as a stockboy at The Limited, and wondering why the hell I signed up for AP English.

September 1986: I’m a college dropout in the middle of my transfer from Myrtle Beach SC (where I’ve lived for three months) to Charlotte NC (where I’ll live for three years) to open a brand new branch of the surf and skate shop in a leaky former convenience store.

September 1991: I’ve just returned to Greensboro from my first visit to San Francisco, and I’m starting my final semester in college and wondering what to do next.

September 1996: I’ve just started doing occasional journal-type updates on Planet SOMA, my car is about to be brutally murdered, and I’m planning my first real online vacation to Minnesota. I’m also thinking about quitting my job, not realizing that when I do, I won’t have a full-time job again for at least five years.

September 2001: I still don’t have a full-time job and don’t really want one, am having the scariest health problems of my life, and really want to move back east but I’m wondering what I’ll do when I get there.

There has to be some common thread there, but I’m damned if I can see what it is..

Spam

Is it just me or is spam getting much worse the past few months? It’s now way past the 5-10 per day I used to get; my junk mail is now outnumbering the legitimate mail by a factor of five or six to one on weekend days…

There hasn’t been an email address on this site for a couple of years, I never post to newsgroups or message boards without using a throwaway Yahoo address, and I even use customized addresses (“amazon@”, for example) when I buy online so I know who’s selling addresses. I use Eudora, which isn’t fully HTML-compliant, so “web bugs” (those graphics which let the sender know that you’ve read his mail and set you up for even more) aren’t an issue. But still it’s getting worse and worse…

The disturbing thing is that more and more of it seems to be coming from “legitimate” companies, like Belk Department Stores, a company which has already fielded several irate calls from me and will never have to worry about my being a customer again, even if I should happen to move back near one of their stores. I’m really aggressive about letting companies like this know that their tactics are completely unacceptable…

I’ve become adept at filtering messages, so only about 15-20% of the garbage lands in my inbox, but it’s still gotten so bad that I’m even thinking of deleting my main, most-used email alias and broadcasting a new one to friends I want to hear from. And until there’s a system by which these slimewads have to take some responsibility for the “free speech” they exercise, it will only get worse…

Spending Spree

I spent two hundred bucks (which I arguably don’t have) on miscellaneous electronics today. It made me happy, or at least happier than I was before I started out…

Neighbors

I met one of my neighbors today. Not one of the ever-ephemeral loft dwellers across the street, but the gentleman right around the corner. The one who’s been here 70 years. In this neighborhood. In the same building. In fact, one of his kids once lived in my buidling…

What must it be like for a man to have watched all the changes South of Market since the 1930s, and from the very midst of the neighborhood yet? There can’t be too many others around. With only nine years under my belt I feel like I’ve been living here longer than a good chunk of my neighbors…

I think I may have to talk to him more often. Besides, I fell in love with his dog…

Anyway, it’s hotter than hell in my apartment and I can’t open my windows because of the painters. The whole building’s turning a rather putrid shade of Pepto-Bismol pink, but that’s apparently just the primer. I’m glad it’s eventually going away, although I must say it’s very soothing to the stomach…

BerkeleyBreathed.com on the monitor and Young Frankestein on the TV, which now has much-enhanced audio…

Jesus…

My God. I wake up at 7:30, hear sirens, read a quick email message from a friend in New York telling me that two planes have flown into the World Trade Center, turn on the news, and realize that the whole country has gone insane.

What the fuck is going on?