Speaking of twenty years ago, it was that same week that I first met my friend Duncan, an island of common sense and humor in a sea overflowing with people who have neither. Happy birthday and many happy returns of the day, my good friend…
I love my apartment. I’ve lived in it for nigh onto ten years, so this is a good thing. I’m about to be sharing it. I love that too. That said, there are a few things about it which I will not miss when I leave.
Requirements for my next abode:
- A washer, dryer, and dishwasher. Pretty close to non-negotiable.
- A shower surfaced in actual tile and not some Formica-like substance which doesn’t really lend itself to being in a damp room.
- No, repeat no, industrial grey wall-to-wall carpet.
- Sufficient electrical service so that I won’t cringe if I dare to use the microwave and the toaster oven at the same time.
- A guaranteed and maybe even designated parking space.
- About 50% more of a bedroom than I now have.
- About 100% more of a guest room than I now have.
- No warehouse (with constant deliveries by very large trucks) across the street even if it means I can’t look out my front window at all the cute juvenile delinquent boys who work there.
People in the south are just nice. In today’s mail, I received a box of supermarket collectibles and rare photos from a complete stranger in North Carolina. He’s letting me borrow them to scan for this site and then I’m to return them to him. They’re not terribly valuable, although they are somewhat irreplaceable and would probably fetch a couple of hundred dollars on eBay. But this very nice man thought nothing of sending them right to me, even though he doesn’t know me from Adam, and he even told me I could keep some items of which he had duplicates…
Sort of restores my faith in humanity. And you can rest assured his stuff will be returned quickly and in the same condition in which it was recieved. I want to get it all back to him before I have a chance to spill something on it…
Absolutely asinine: career homosexual Jeff Sheehy’s latest rambling in the Examiner about the “explicit homophobia” among tenant activists who dare to disagree with his position on a pending home ownership ballot initiative in San Francisco. Apparently, since he is homosexual and since the issue might impact him in some fashion, anyone who opposes it is a raging “homophobe”…
Note please that I don’t currently have an opinion one way or another on the initiative itself; I don’t know enough about it. I might even find myself in favor of it, just like the author, if for different reasons…
But I most definitely have an opinion on this particular op-ed piece. It aggravates me so much I can hardly express it. Mr. Sheehy has apparently lived so much of his life framing everything in terms of sexual orientation that his only means of arguing ANY issue now seems to be to cry “homophobia” whether or not any actually exists. Limited vocabulary, I guess…
For all his babbling about “refugee communities” (who evidently have more of a God-given right to own property than anyone else, especially with government assistance) and “life as a fully realized person participating in a community free from discrimination”, he doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that homsexuality is completely unrelated to this particular issue. There is no connection. Period…
Of course, to admit this to himself would be to render invalid his assertion that tenant activists are nothing but evil “homophobes” (despite the fact that many of them are every bit as homosexual as Mr. Sheehy himself). While these activists undoubtedly have some skewed priorities, I find it hard to stomach the none-too-hidden assertion that they wake up every morning wondering how they can “screw over the fags” today…
I can see a great future for Mr. Sheehy as a speech writer for Willie Brown, another San Franciscan with a penchant for finding bigotry anytime a dissenting question is asked…
OK, so i’m having the same, ummm, adverse reaction to my Subway lunch that I had to the Quizno’s stuff a while back. Maybe I should just give up subs and stick with double cheeseburgers…
Caught the premiere of Georgy Girl on TCM tonight and it got me in the mood to seek a bit of information on one of my other favorite British (and Lynn Redgrave) films of the era, Smashing Time. Which I managed, a few minutes later, to buy on DVD for only eight bucks plus shipping. I do love the web sometimes…
Mark gets here in less than 24 hours now. He’s had a crappy week. I’ve had a lethargic week. Much garlic should do us both a world of good, although it probably won’t help me update more frequently nor be better about answering email than I’ve been lately…
Time to walk up to the corner now and pick up enough fags to last me through tomorrow…
I fear I may have developed a dreaded summer cold. Granted, summer in San Francisco is a relative thing, but that makes me no less phlegmy and my throat no less scratchy. Other than that, though, I don’t feel particularly sick. Maybe it’s just allergies, but I don’t think so. Either way, if this screws up my weekend, I’m gonna be pissed and I even know exactly which co-worker to be pissed AT…
So yes, the dreaded summer cold DID arrive in my life on Friday, but fortuntely it was accompanied by my first birthday present of the year (from Duncan) on Friday afternoon and by the arrival of Mark on Friday night. All in all, it was bearable, although I’m sure I wasn’t terribly exciting company this weekend…
So about that Gilroy Garlic Festival: we tried to attend. We really did. Mark drove patiently through the hell which is everything south of San Jose, and I killed off a box of Kleenex in the process. We were motivated, dammit…
About 45 minutes after we’d originally planned to, we arrived in downtown Gilroy and started following the signs (and the hoardes of cars) to the park where said festival was to be held. I’d mention the name of the park, but I have no idea what it was; after moving slowly in a line of cars to the point where (a) we were on the verge of running out of gas, and (b) we still had no idea if we were within ten miles of the damned place, we gave up and headed back north…
The lack of planning was stunning. The festival is apparently held in some godforsaken park in the middle of nowhere, with only one road in or out. Any other roads which may (or may not) have led to it were blocked off. There is no indication of how far away you are and the traffic is astounding. Just plain idiotic; if they want people to get so frustrated that they just give up, they’ve found the perfect MO…
The day was saved somewhat by dinner at the El Rancho Steakhouse in San Jose and by catching Superfluid Helium 3 in the Mission (which turned out to be far more car-friendly than suburban Gilroy). Jamie met us for the show, Mark drank, and I ate carrot cake. We were happy, even if one of us was a bit sniffly…
The cold seems to be going away now, or at least moving deeper into my chest, which is good. I think. Mark’s gone away too, which is not so good. But it leaves me the rest of Sunday afternoon to watch movies and drink Diet 7-Up and avoid leaving the house and having to see the lukewarm leatherettes who have overtaken my neighborhood as part of the annual dress rehearsal for the much bigger naugahyde festival in September…
This kept me up way too late tonight. As I think I’ve mentioned before, California is now doing what every other state in the union did thirty years ago and adding exit numbers on all its freeways. And here’s the full list detailing plans for the Golden State’s bold leap forward into the 1970s…
Mark is here for a few hours for a job interview (which may get him living here even quicker and more seemlessly than originally planned). He’ll also get to go to Dan’s birthday dinner tonight before driving back to Fresno. I’ll finish up some work later this evening. And then this rather hectic week will be over and I’ll have three days to answer about a month’s worth of email…
Keep in mind that if you happen to be in SF next Saturday night and have no other plans, you’re invited to watch me turn 38…