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2001

The Hospital Saga

I’m not sure which is scarier: the multi-thousand dollar hospital bill I’m about to owe (as one of the uninsured masses) or the fact that, twice a day for the next week, I have to inject a substance made from the mucous of pig intestines into myself at about $60 a pop. I like pork, but jeez…

This is the story of my unexpected 48-hour trip to the hospital on Monday. I thought I had bronchitis. I was short of breath and coughing. As it turned out, I had an enlarged heart which was beating erratically at two to three times its normal rate and I needed to go the emergency room. Immediately.

I’ve never been admitted to a hospital before, and I have to say that for a first time, California Pacific is a good one. Everyone was really nice and helpful and was always mindful of cost, without sacrificing care. I had one doctor who even offered to waive his fee.

But hospitals suck. The food sucks, the waiting around sucks, and the fact that I came without jammies REALLY sucked. The doctors and nurses were really nice (even if none of them were cute) and the Cartoon Network was available on TV.

I was sedated for one procedure (which involved running a probe down my esophagus) and apparently woke up sobbing uncontrollably, worrying about whether everyone who was supposed to had signed the Declaration of Independence. That was a little creepy…

Final diagnosis: complications from hyperthyroidism. It’s apparently quite treatable (I just paid for $700 worth of drugs to prove it) but it might well have killed me if I hadn’t come in when I did.

Anyone got a couple of thousand bucks lying around that you don’t need?

Even better, anyone got any good stories to take my mind off being confronted with my own mortality?

Unplanned Road Trip

I left the house at about 11:30 this morning for a quick trip to get cigarettes and lunch. Maybe some groceries too. By the time I got home, ten hours later, I’d been to Saratoga, Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz, Capitola, Watsonville (for the first time), Gilroy, Morgan Hill, and San Jose.

And, now that I think about it, I never did get cigarettes.

Things I may write about later:

  • Assholes on motorcycles (or penis size issues for dummies)
  • I love A&W (or musings on a round, orange fireplace)
  • Los Gatos (or how rich white people turn nice towns into such boring places)

Rain? OMGWTFLOL

While, as I said, it’s unusual for it to rain in San Francisco this late in June, it’s definitely not so freakish as to justify that red, scrolling “weather alert” which was running on the Weather Channel earlier, warning people to watch out for slick roads, etc.

Jeez. The rainy season ended in April. We’re not so fucking stupid here that we forget how to cope with a SIXTH OF AN INCH of rain after two months, are we?

The Weekend

This is so cool. It’s almost July and it’s raining outside. Those of you who are not familiar with California’s seasonal climates can be excused for not understanding how odd this is, but I’m loving it…

But God forbid there should be thunder or lightning.

High point of the weekend: not getting charged for my taste-free meatballs at dinner Friday night with Dan and Jamie.

Alternate: Simpsons marathon Saturday night.

Low point of the weekend: getting anywhere near Civic Center yesterday even if it was just to catch a bus to the Mission for a burrito.

Alternate: standing in line at my corner store behind six very proud and very chemically-enhanced idiots who couldn’t make a decision or count money if their white tank tops depended on it. But they looked fabulous. Really.

Tedious activity of the weekend: creating many banner ads for TV shows I probably won’t watch.

Alternate: walking to the Mission upon realizing that no bus could cut through all the parade-related traffic.

New Client Site

This may be a record for me: I set up the hosting and domain name and started working on it for the client on Monday night and it was online, with said domain name resolving correctly, on Thursday morning. If only I were getting, say, one per cent of the sale price…

Fun with Search Engines

Haven’t done one of these in a while. It’s always worth a chuckle or two, and it works nicely when I have absolutely nothing else interesting to write about. Here are some current bizarre searches that people have done from within Planet SOMA and The Other Stream. Keep in mind that people had to have already made it into the site before performing these searches.

The obvious missplellings are among my favorites. I’m not talking typos here. I mean repeated searches for things like “masterbate”, “masterbation”, and “masterbation free”, among others. The best this month is “los angles a place dineyland”, with “hermofidet”, “lesbean girls”, “cesa charvez” and “junipsara” receiving honorable mention.

I’m still trying to figure out if “anyl” (which pops up a lot) refers to “anal” or “amyl”.

I also love the people who think they have to type everything all run together with no spaces (“blackwomenpics”, “nudewomenpics”, “1on1sex”, “nudesex”, “sfgaydatingservice”, and “sanfranciscogaypride”). Maybe they’re just native German speakers, but you have to imagine these people spend a lot of their online hours feeling very frustrated.

People who don’t quite get the concept of where they are have entertainment value too:

  • live sex scenes with lesbians
  • asian pussy
  • brother and sister sexy gallery

An then there are the bafflers. These are just plain strange:

  • bar fluid
  • one more scoop (four searches for this)
  • 77032
  • 77325
  • giarlam
  • fark
  • brick circles in the street
  • asses sexyyyy
  • orgy thumbs
  • dogfart
  • person that found castro street

I’d really like to help te person who thought I had the universal truth about “the real secret of piltdown”, mainly so I could ask what a “piltdown” is. Maybe he or she was also the one who thought I knew the top-secret “truth about the 1980’s”.

But to the person who searched for “www.gltb organizations.com”. Please note that there are no spaces in URLS, unlike in the normal English phrases mentioned above, and that addresses also work much better of you type them into your browser’s address bar rather than into a search query box.

Bravo Bad

So I accidentally stumbled across this on Bravo. It’s supposed to be a depiction of “real gay life” (what ever that’s supopsed to be) featuring a bunch of annoying little wankers who work in upscale gyms, go to circuit parties in Florida, and engage in something called “Faggot Feud”. Hold me back. My pride is bursting at the seems…

I expected something a little better out of Bravo, and remind them that (a) shows about homosexuals who do interesting things are good, and (b) shows about homosexuals who do little other walk around “being gay” are terribly boring…

Anyway, I’m hot and tired and cranky and overloaded with work I don’t feel like doing, and the only salvation for the evening was finding the Two Fat Ladies (it’s been a while) after I scurried for the remote…

Other things I was going to write about but have decided to skip for the evening:

  • Lottery Fever (or why I’d rather bet on horse races)
  • Applesauce (or how something made from apples can have so little nutritional value)
  • Annoying commercials for prescription medications (or why I think I’d rather just urinate thirty times a day)