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2002

The Romance Is Over

The romance is over. This afternoon, I tried everything I could to re-ignite the spark, and I just couldn’t do it. There’s nothing left to spice up anymore. I should just give up..

I’m talking about my long-souring romance with the Bay Area, by the way. I had another of those moments of realization today. I was down in the South Bay and I tried so desperately hard to get lost and see something I hadn’t seen before as I found my way out of wherever I was. And despite my most valiant efforts, I was unable to do so…

Unless you count that ten minutes I couldn’t find my way out of some office park in Santa Clara. And I don’t. That’s just too easy. And unpleasant…

One of the reasons (there were, of course, several others as well) that I left both Charlotte and Greensboro was that I was incapable of getting lost there anymore. Yeah, it sounds strange, but that’s how my mind works. Maybe it’s a thing with us Geography majors. All six of us…

And yeah, the sixth day is the hardest, dammit. But I’m glad I’m getting all this consumerist frenzy out of the way this weekend, since I apparently won’t be leaving the bed next weekend. Not that I have a problem with the idea or anything…

Mmmm. Cryptic.

Many, many things on my mind tonight, but they’ll have to wait until tomorrow, because I spent the whole evening rewiring and making my big new TV fit into a space which was way to small for it. But I did it. And my collection of dirty videos played a very important part…

Yeah, that whole paragraph was suitably vague, and maybe I’ll rewrite it some day. Or not. I’m going to bed now, since I have to be awake again in under seven hours…

Damn, I miss you. And I owe you one (and Jamie too)…

Super Bowl Monday

I got email spam this afternoon inviting me to bet on the Super Bowl. I think even I may have been able to get a successful bet down at this point (20 hours after the game ended), but I still decided to skip it…

I will say, again, that Super Bowl Sunday is a great day to shop, especially in the ‘burbs. There was hardly a soul in Best Buy yesterday. We were also spared the massive traffic jam on the Bay Bridge as we headed back into the city at 6:00…

I guess I could’ve watched it, but I remain convinced that football and baseball are, without question, the two most boring sports in the world, tight and semi-revealing uniforms notwithstanding. How those twenty or so minutes of actual activity or motion can stretch to fill a three-plus-hour time slot is absolutely beyond me…

Pro skateboarding, now there’s a sport I can sink my teeth into. So to speak…

There’s a better journal entry in me this afternoon, but I haven’t really written it yet, so maybe it’ll wind up as a “later still”…

Why is Bravo running lots of “the making of…” movie trailers where “Hill Street Blues” is supposed to be?

Love/Hate

Long, strangely busy week and I’m now in the midst of a new project which may stave off eviction and starvation for another month or so. And no, this is not the “better journal entry” I promised a couple of days ago. I also make no promises that there will be any improvement for several more days. Sorry…

 

Things I love today:

  • Him, with or without a currently functional website.
  • My big new TV.
  • The new Radio Shack signal amplifier which has finally made my cable worth watching on the aforementioned big new TV.
  • Designing websites while listening to KABL on my 1963 clock radio with glow control. High tech meets low tech, y’know?
  • The likelihood that I will soon be revisiting the northwest after a five year absence.

Things I hate today:

  • Moving my car on street cleaning night.
  • My (I assume) medication-induced bloodshot right eyeball.
  • People who, when confronted with the fact that they’re in the wrong lane, decide the proper approach is to come to a grinding halt and hold up everyone behind them until they can move to the correct one.
  • Verio, for fucking over another friend.
  • The fact that my local Simpsons rerun station hasn’t run a pre-1999 meltdown episode in months.

It’s time for bed…

Lucky There’s A…

Two episodes of “Family Guy” in one night. I think it’s a plot to divert attention from the fact that it’s been cancelled. Again. For something like the fourth time…

Having always had the utmost respect for obsessive nerds (you should see some of the Filemaker databases I’ve created), this site gets my highest praise, even though they missed that “Archie, Sabrina, and the Groovie Goulies” vortex. Thanks to Sarah for that link…

OK, I’ve been working ever since I got home from work (what?), and now I’m gonna go watch a movie on my big new TV and rest up for my much-anticipated trip to the land of Mark (and his new site) tomorrow. It’s been 11 days; advance rest may be very much required. So yes, this is the next in a series of half-assed journal entries rather than the long-promised interesting one. Sorry…

I want meat loaf and I want it now…

Dreamy

This is the second time this week I’ve had a dream which involved me being in high school. Last night’s centered around the first day of the semester. I was in math class. The teacher was trying to explain some obscure concept with plates of rather unpleasant vegan food which, for some reason, we all kept eating before she could make her point. All the while, I was trying to keep the attention of some girl I had the hots for…

Y’know, I’m pretty sure I don’t even want to know what that whole thing symbolized…

Weekend in Fresno

 

I think it would be just about impossible to overstate how much I enjoyed this weekend and didn’t want it to end. Thanks. I’m really worn out, so I’ll just throw up some random observations for now:

  • Firsts for me. Lots of firsts. And several realizations as well. More about that later. It’s been kind of a season for realizations. And firsts.
  • Los Creepers and Fastback 69. Yay.
  • Is there ever NOT a wreck on I-580 in Livermore?
  • I have become a designated driver.
  • A really nice Mies van der Rohe book for 90 cents is a wonderful thing.
  • I’m 37 1/2 years old (as of today, which I forgot until now) and I feel about 13, except when I’m taking my pills.
  • Why yes, the left lane IS designed for passing and not for cruising along at your own pace. Thanks for noticing.
  • Should I be concerned that I’ve spent more time in a bar 180 miles from my house than in any of the ones in my neighborhood lately?
  • Dimanche Gras, anyone?
  • I think I could probably live in Baltimore if I had to.
  • If I were a mystery shopper, the Burger King in Modesto would have failed miserably tonight.
  • Fabuloso comes in FOUR colors now?

OK, that probably made no sense at all. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow. Right now, I’m teetering between happy, goofy, and comatose, so I’m going to bed…

Animal “Rights”

“Under the law, animals are treated as property. They have no rights, their value being determined solely by their usefulness for humans.”

What, may I ask, is wrong with this? The writer, who specializes in something called “animal law”, suggests that this is a major weakness in our legal system. I beg to differ. But then again, I also don’t believe that animals have any rights. Nor that they ever can.

Mr. Blatte states that “The civil rights movement overcame oppression based on a difference in skin color. The women’s rights movement overcame oppression based on a difference in gender. With animals, by focusing on species, a difference with no moral significance, we are committing the exact same type of oppression.”

What utter bullshit. Rights are a specifically human innovation. Humans, as a species, have the intellectual capacity to have created them and to understand the implications. And humans are uniquely and exclusively eligible to possess rights. Yes, in this case the ability to express and assert them is required in order to have them.

To suggest that the call for animal rights and equality is on an equivalent moral level to the struggle for women’s right or the civil rights movement is to completely trivialize those important developments in our history. Animals are not the equal of human beings, whether male, female, black, white, brown, heterosexual, or homosexual. Given the slow pace of evolution, it’s highly unlikely that they will be for the next million or so years.

Animals cannot feel oppressed. They can feel pain and hunger and perhaps some level of emotion. But they cannot experience hurt feelings if their human companions consider themselves “pet owners” rather than “animal guardians”. They do not suffer from reduced self-esteem when the legal system is biased against them based on species.

Dogs are no more entitled to jury trials than to job protection nor marriage benefits. Cats have no need nor desire for a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing them full and equal protection under the law. While animals can indeed suffer, they cannot suffer discrimination nor injustice; to do so requires the capacity to understand what discrimination and injustice are.

Animals also do not have the specific “right” to be in any specific space (and this also applies to public spaces where their owners may decide to take them), nor to cause any sort of discomfort, physical harm, or fear to human beings. Owners have certain rights, and are subject to certain limitations and responsibilities. People who don’t want to be around animals also have rights, limitations, and responsibilities. Animals have none of the above and are subject to the exercise of rights by the humans around them.

Again, human beings have rights. And the attendant responsibilities. Animals have neither. The very idea that they would is laughable.

Even animal rights activists agree, although they are reluctant to admit it, that humans are firmly in charge by virtue of evolution, and that animals are subject to our will. Who, after all would be conferring these “rights”? The only real point of contention is how the animals will be TREATED. The idea that animals have “rights” is more about semantics and catchy jargon than any real moral or philosophical issue.

This is not to say that I think it’s open season on our furry little friends. It could be argued that humans have a moral and ethical responsibility to protect animals from undue pain and suffering, just as we have a responsibility not to destroy public property nor to do significant damage to the environment. If we, as human beings, decide that the humane treatment of animals (and even the occasional preference in their favor) is a benefit to society, so much the better.

But none of this is due to any “rights” instrinsically held by animals. Animals have whatever privileges we choose to allow them. Including the right to life. And if there is a conflict between the needs of animals and the needs of humans, humans come first. In all cases. And without the slightest hesitation or resevation.

New York Pizza

No more New York Pizza. An email correspondent today advised me that it burned down on Monday night…

For those of you not in the know (which would be about 98% of you), New York Pizza was probably my favorite drinking establishment in Greensboro. It was a great place: a pizza joint with bar on a corner of Tate Street, UNCG‘s pathetic excuse for a college strip. It was dark and dumpy, it had a great jukebox, the pitchers were cheap, and there was always plenty of greasy stomach padding to be found…

But the best thing about the place was the crowd. It was one of those rare places which small cities seem to generate more readliy than big ones: an all-purpose joint where college kids, trailer trash, musicians, homosexuals, and burnouts sat and drank and talked and smoked. Usually with no problems, and often with a great deal of interaction among the different groups…

It was not a trendy place; in fact, it was little more than a dump, but it was usually a far more pleasant place to be than Greensboro’s dismal, tight-assed, disco queer bars or its assorted fratboy and redneck hangouts. In recent years, it had become the only bar left on Tate Street, not so much through gentrification, but more through the sanitizing influences of the nearby university, the fascist College Hill neighborhood organization, and a higher drinking age…

I’m told they’ll rebuild, but I have my doubts. Even if they do, it won’t be the same…