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2004

Macy’s Uber Alles

 

Abraham and Strauss. Stern’s. Davison’s. The Broadway. Weinstock’s. The Emporium. Bullock’s. Jordan Marsh. Maas Brothers. Liberty House. I Magnin. Rich’s. Bon Marche. Lazarus. Burdine’s. Soon, every department store will be Macy’s. Except, of course, for Dayton’s and Hudson’s, which are now Marshall Field…

I haven’t purchased much of anything in a traditional department store in years. I generally don’t even visit them anymore, except for the occasional moment of desperation around Christmas. But I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by the history of the big regional chains and the architecture of their older stores, and it’s sort of sad to see so many grand old names disappearing so quickly over the past few years…

Although some people undoubtedly do, I don’t see some sinister plot here. And make no mistake: none of these stores has been locally-owned for decades anyway. Marketing consolidation was probably necessary for a troubled industry which so many people apparently find — as do I — to be such an utterly irrelevant part of everyday life. It’s just a shame that we have to bid farewell to century-old names and that we must forfeit one more little bit of regional identity in the process…

Happy David

David is very happy. David popped into the Grocery Outlet in Redwood City yesterday on a whim and found contraband you can’t purchase in California: Grape Pop-tarts. David bought three boxes, which should cover him until his visit to North Carolina in November…

And then, this morning, David woke up, pulled out his earplugs, and realized that the first rain of the season was falling outside his bedroom window…

It’s too bad David’s husband was out of town and wasn’t able to see David running around in circles in the living room wagging his tail…

Leaving

Have I mentioned lately how glad I am that there’s a specific date for our departure from this rathole of a city? And how glad I am that said date is growing closer and closer?

Sorry. It’s amazing how this place can wreck a really good mood in such a hurry…

Stupid Thyroid

For those of you who are keeping score, my thyroid seems to have won another round. Despite valiant efforts to vaporize it using radioactive iodine, the little bugger has once again asserted its right to exist and cause me no end of problems, most notably my arrhythmic heart and, more recently, my up and down metabolism…

Apparently, a maximum of about ten percent of radioactove iodine recipients have to deal with a thyroid which comes back to life. I’ve shown an uncanny ability to be withing “that” ten percent all the way thorugh this process. With my luck, I’ll also probably end up with Marty Feldman eyes…

This is really getting old…

On the up side, we saw Siouxsie this weekend at the Warfield. I’m in the midst of acquiring every episode of Night Gallery from a marathon on the Mystery Channel. And a cute shaggy-headed boy with drumsticks was either flirting with me — or maybe he was just making fun of me — on the bus this afternoon…

The Silliest Place on Earth

Fourteen years, eleven months, and two weeks after the 1989 earthquake caused a section of it to collapse and revealed major seismic problems, we are once again back in the design phase for the Bay Bridge…

What an absolutely, outrageously, laughably silly place this is, and how very glad I am to be leaving it…

Pissed

Right now, there is a pair of individuals in central California who have got me so irritated and frustrated that I could scream. That’s all I’m going say, because if I get started, I won’t be able to stop until I’ve said it to THEM. Which I probably have no business doing…

Anyway, here’s good news, maybe…

Public Art

Is there some reason that all “public art” must be stupid and pointless? There’s the giant copper sand dollar thing in downtown Charlotte, for example. And here in San Francisco, there are assorted sculptures and fountains all over town which look like nothing so much as abstract representations of human intestines…

And then there’s this mural in Livermore, you see. It looks like it was created by a twelve-year-old. A twelve-year-old who can’t spell. A very DEFENSIVE twelve-year-old who can’t spell. She (Maria Alquilar) was paid forty grand to do this piece of “public art” and she couldn’t even be bothered to spell the names of several rather famous artists and scientists correctly…

Obviously, Ms. Alquilar is no “Eistein” and she’s not a literary heavyweight (check out, the punctuation, and grammar, on the link to her site, above, you will see, a sample), but when confronted, she doesn’t even have the decency to apologize with diginity for her mistakes, but instead goes into tirades about how spelling is “unimportant” and complains that her errors are getting more attention than her “art”…

It’s disturbing enough that the city of Livermore paid so much money for this ridiculous-looking mural to begin with. But now, they’re actually planning to pay her MORE to come and fix her own errors. What they should be doing is suing her to get their money back…

Maybe then, they could find a REAL artist to do something a little more professional. Lord knows you’ll find typos and the occasional misspelling all over this website. But nobody handed me 40,000 bucks for creating it either…

And lest anyone get the mistaken idea that I’m making fun of someone whose primary language is not English, let me assure you that Ms. Alquilar speaks the language every bit as well as I do. She apparently just doesn’t write it very well…

I Don’t Smoke

I’ll be coming up on a year of being smoke-free in just a few weeks now. I keep thinking that once I’ve hit that one-year milestone, I’ll be home free and that it will all be over for me. And I guess it will, mostly. I won’t lie and say there aren’t times when I want a cigarette, even after eleven months. Heck, I can think of several times just in the past couple of days, although the cravings are usually less noticeable than they’ve been this week…

All in all, I still think I’m past it. Once I give something up, I don’t usually come back to it. I’ve never understood how people could “quit” smoking eight or ten times a year, as some of my friends and co-workers do. It’s no wonder they generally never succeed; the stress of “quitting” over and over again must be terrible. Of course, they really never quit; they just stop carrying their own cigarettes and constantly beg them from other people, assuming that “just one” will get them through the crisis…

I probably shouldn’t get all self-righteous. Stress might overtake me and I might find myself running up to the corner store for a fix tonight. But I’m going to be optimistic and start planning my little celebration soon…

But you know what? I still think banning smoking in bars was a stupid idea…

Unrelated: Oh goody. It’s Fleet Week. Nothing facilitates a a relaxing weekend like ear-splitting, earth-shaking noise overhead all weekend…

I’m Toxic

There are all kinds of procedures to follow when one has radioactive iodine treatment. For example, I’m supposed to stay at least two feet away from anyone with whom I’m to have prolonged contact. I’m supposed to “void” often, flush twice each time I do it, and wipe up misfires immediately…

But I can never find answers to really relevant questions like what to do with the towel I use after wanking. I’ve just never been fond of using Kleenex as a substitute…