Menu Close

All posts

Stupid AT&T

I stepped outside a few minutes ago, almost got knocked over by the breeze from the bay, and thought “it’s chilly tonight”. The weather is normal again. I am happy.

This afternoon, I was not happy. I finally told AT&T to fuck off after being a long-distance customer since 1986. I’d been thinking of it for quite a while, mainly because of their erratic billing (bi-monthly? quarterly? hell, who knows?) and all their miscellaneous semi-hidden charges.

Today’s bill, though, was the last straw: they charged me $16.00 for a 20-minute call from Fresno to Greensboro for using 102880 (the method they pushed for so many years) rather than dialing their fucking toll-free number. I could have gotten a better rate using a pay phone owned by the Mafia. And, of course, none of their phone people were particularly helpful (and none would connect me with a supervisor) so I ditched them for Working Assets. Simple. Took 15 minutes, and now I get free ice cream for a year too…

It’s been a bad month for me and phones (not to mention other customer support issues). I’m probably on some 1-800 blacklist now, too; I have a pretty short fuse when I’m getting fucked over. Especially when I’m getting fucked over by idiots at some call center who may well be convicts for all I know.

And your day?

Half a Million

In a few days, this front page will by accessed for the half-millionth time. I find this fact absolutely frightening, but I’ll think about that in a few days. It’s still hot and unpleasant inside my apartment (although the temperature outside has gotten a little more bearable), but I don’t want to think about that now either.

I’m also frightened by the fact that I’m starting to get email from the occasional headhunter. Must be a tight labor market indeed. But that, too, is a thought for another day…

No, today I’m frightened by McDonald’s. I switched on the VCR tonight to watch something I recorded last night. As the tape started, the McDonald’s commercial on the broadcast channel was replaced by yet ANOTHER McDonald’s commercial at the beginning of the tape. Jeez. It’s not like every breathing soul on the planet doesn’t already know about McDonald’s…

Corporate ethics and labor policies aside, wouldn’t it be nice if they invested some of that advertsing budget on making their food suck a little less? I’m not anything resembling a food snob. I eat a good bit of junk food. But McDonald’s is pretty much the bottom of the barrel. It’s the fast food I eat only when nothing else is an option.

Hot and Sticky

Hot, sticky, and miserable. The kind of weekend where you’re perpetually tired, both from the heat itself and from the fact that the heat kept you from sleeping the night before. In my case, I coped today by keeping all the blinds shut and not moving all day. Yesterday I just drove around all afternoon, enjoying the air-conditioned comfort my car provides but my apartment is lacking.

Some people really enjoy this kind of weather when it makes its brief appearances here. I understand how they feel and I respect their opinions. I feel so much love and understanding that I’ve even devised a pet name for them: “freaks”.

I’m going to go hang out in the frozen food department at Safeway until Growing Up Brady comes on…

Some Idiot’s Foot

It started when I accidentally brushed against this guy’s foot with mine while standing in the back room of my friendly neighborhood sex bar. I realized I’d done it immediately and had already stepped away. I was about to utter “excuse me” when he whined in his annoying San Francisco perpetual faggot victim voice “you’re on my foot”.

Of course, I was already off his stinky little foot at this point anyway, but I finished my “excuse me” like a good, polite Southern boy. He just glared at me. I was thinking about how this happens to my poor, tortured foot about a dozen times every time I walk into a crowded bar without causing me a moment’s anguish. It sort of comes with the territory in bars, and especially in back rooms. You step on someone, you excuse yourself, they acknowledge, and you both get on with your lives.

Still, he kept glaring like I was some drunk (I wasn’t) sack of shit (I may have been). I looked at him and re-iterated “pardon the FUCK out of me, jackass” and walked away. I heard some whiny comment, and I turned around to tell him “welcome to the back room, where sensibilities occasionally get offended”. Then I wnet home.

Walking down Folsom Street, I started wondering why this had set me off so. Of course he was an idiot, but I’ve dealt with other idiots hundreds of time in the same bar. Why did I snap? And why do I seem to be doing it so often lately? I’ve done it at work, in the car, by email, or wherever I happen to be at the time.

I’m easily annoyed. This is not a major revelation. I’ve always been sort of an impatient grumpy kind of guy, but I usually manage to have a sense of humor about it. Why am I so damned irritable lately? Why am I overreacting to damn near everything?

From careful statistical analysis of my recent blow-ups, I’ve determined that what I’m doing is overreacting to other people who overreact to ME. I’m not sure what this might be a symptom of, but I know it could sure get me hurt if I don’t watch out…

Scat

Only three scatalogical email messages so far, and one of them even gave me cool tips on how I could even make my shit FLOAT if I were so inclined. Thank God for this font of useless information we call “the internet”.

Shit. Literally.

Take the new and improved Planet SOMA Factory tour…

Crimes against nature:

  • Canned corn
  • Low-flow toilets
  • The upcoming “Gilligan’s Island” marathon on Nick-at-Nite

Of course, numbers one and three paint me as a snob and number two makes me look anti-environment. But canned corn is just plain nasty, on the same level as canned squash and canned rutabagas. “Gilligan’s Island” is pure crap, and while I love a lot of crap, I don’t love this particular crap. Number two on the list is, of course, related to crap as well and to the fact that I want said crap to disappear when I ask it to by flushing the crapper.

I guess number two could also be related to “number two”, for those of you who grew up using that particular term. I grew up in a “stinky” house myself. It seved as both noun and verb (“I have to stinky” or “there’s still stinky in the commode”). Most of my friends were from “doo doo” homes. I never met “poop” people until I moved to California, and even then, most of them were from Ohio.

Please don’t inundate me with email about the term you used to describe defecation unless it was really funny…

Straight-acting?

Seems I’m a “somewhat feminine” Level 5 on the straight-acting scale. Mind you I still have no earthly fucking idea just what “straight acting” means, but at least I know that — whatever it is — I don’t do it very well. This is a terrific comfort to me and is comparable to my happiness that I’m apparently not great at “gay acting” either, whatever THAT is….

What I can’t figure out is this: what effect did having a T-shirt with a cartoon character on it have on my score? Does it matter if it was, say, Quisp rather than Quake?

These results, along with yesterday’s indicating that I’m a brown have convinced me that (a) I’m right in the boring average middle of just about any scale, and (b) that I should stop taking quizzes I learn about from Jonno’s site.

In other news, I’ve been asked to pose naked, to move the fuck to Cuba, and to apply for three more credit cards today. Interesting Monday. Yours?

Saturday Morning

I started my Saturday morning in a suite at the Palace. That was fun. I didn’t wake up there, alas. I was just visting my friend Jim, who’d lucked into it through a booking error. All the same, I was hoping someone would call this morning and ask what I was about to do so I could say I was meeting a friend in his suite at the Palace. No one did. Pity.

I’m probably going to offend some reader who has one, but this is the ugliest damned car I’ve seen in a long time. What designer on what planet ever thought this piece of shit was attractive? (Note: Sarah says it’s one of these environmentally-friendly models, which makes me feel a little guilty, but the fact remains that it’s butt-ugly…)

Anyway, now it’s Sunday and it’s raining and I’m pretty damned excited about that fact, especially since it’s May.

Did you call your mother today?

Sex and Links

So much for quality control. Seems I left Ginger out of my revamped links page earlier today and made Groc cry. I am evil. I have now rectified said error.

I put my dick up a boy’s butt last night while several people cheered us on. That was a nice and unexpected diversion. And I now have your undivided attention, I’ll bet. Good.

Superlatives of the weekend so far:

  • Best unexpected 1980s song heard in the corner sex bar: “Nowhere Girl” by B-Movie.
  • Best burger joint: Burger Road in Pleasant Hill.
  • Worst case of indigestion: Mine. Right now.
  • Most annoying commercial: the new Chili’s spot with all the idiots chanting about a “slam-a-boom-a-jamma-rama” or whatever.

You may have noticed I’ve done a little fidgeting with the front page. I like it. The left navigation bar is shorter, which means I don;t have to write quite as much here to keep a balanced look. Of course, I CAN still write more. I just don’t have to if I don’t feel like it.

I’ve also, as mentioned above, streamlined the links a bit. If I’ve left some things out which should still be there, please let me know. But keep in mind that some of the missing links are missing on purpose.

Going to sleep now. I sense that I’ll be waking up in the morning and driving someplace a long way away. I’m not sure where or why…

Credit, Dinner, Etc.

Seems I have good credit again, judging from the numerous pre-approved triple-platinum credit card offers I’m receiving lately. I guess that’s a good thing…

I don’t use credit cards much anymore, having learned a relatively painful series of lessons about them in my early twenties. Of course, you know what they say about the 1980s: if you didn’t have credit card problems, you weren’t really there. Now I just hold a few low-limit ones for car rentals, etc., and try to pay cash whenever possible.

Trust me: it’s better this way.

Had dinner in Oakland last night with Matthew (who’s leaving): meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, and creamed spinach at the Red Tractor Cafe, followed by a quick beer at the Bay Area’s oldest continuously-operating queer bar, the White Horse.

Had I closed my eyes for a minute, I would have sworn I was in Greensboro at the Palms. The place was so very NOT San Francisco. To start with, there were girls and boys in the very same queer bar. Imagine that. And many of them were actually smiling and looking as if they were enjoying being there. There were no fashion victims, no chemical catastrophes, and no one was on a cell phone. It was great, if a bit perky for my tastes.

Of course, there was no one having sex in a back room either, but there are always tradeoffs, I guess.

Tonight? Baked chicken for dinner, followed by a little TV, and maybe later an attempt at sex in a back room (or maybe even at home). After that, I’ll try to get all the sleep I missed last night as I kep thinking “one more chapter and I’ll go to bed.”