Menu Close

Miscellaneous

6 February 1999

Curiosities du jour:

The Castro has really come of age, it seems. The neighborhood which once reached out to queers worldwide is now up in arms about the possible placement of a temporary shelter for homeless gay youth. Despite all the empty babbling about “gay community”, the great social experiment of the 1970s has officially become nothing but an upscale shopping mall…

Protesters outside the Stud this week shouted “maricon” in reaction to “Wetback Night”, a Latino-hosted drag night. Hmm. Let’s see…Latinos accusing other Latinos of bigotry by calling them faggots. Makes sense to me…

The non-introspective life of yer humble host:

Thursday night dinner at Ye Olde Pizza Joynt in Hayward. Spent Friday afternoon helping a friend give birth to a brand new bouncing baby website. Friday evening has been given over to “Polyester”, although it’s not the same without the Odorama scratch-n-sniff card…

And I may go out and commit multiple misdemeanors by smoking cigarettes in my neighborhood bars later tonight…

AOL Sucks

AOL sucks, reason #591: I’ve been working for weeks now on a client site which features a searchable database. Everything works beautifully.

Except on America Online…

Apparently, AOL’s system of proxy servers makes lots of sites unusable. In addition, their system does all sorts of really strange things to sites which do work. All the same, lots of people still use AOL, although the reasons for this continue to elude me.

So I find myself coming up with a half-assed fix to accommodate the ineptitude of a large corporation with unlimited resources. It’s the same disgust I feel when I use Microsoft products…

Things I really love this week: NewsRadio, Minute Maid Lemonade in the gallon jug, this pre-Falwell Teletubbies site, Better Telnet, and this week’s SF Weekly feedback.

Things I really hate this week: AOL (see above), idiots who put me on “press release” email lists I never asked to be on, parking tickets, and Nash Bridges location shoots.

18 February 1999

What is SOMA?

Since I’ve had several email messages about this recently, it’s time for the annual reminder, mostly directed toward non-San Franciscans and those who came in via search engines.

SOMA is the official acronym for South Of Market Area, which is my neighborhood in San Francisco. It has nothing to do with any prescription painkiller nor is any reference to Aldous Huxley implied. SOMA is nothing but a mildly annoying real estate term.

This is an amazing neighborhood and Planet SOMA was originally all about South of Market. A large part of the site still is, in one way or another.

Love and hate:

Things I hate today: HTML-formatted email; beets, green peas, and pickles; TCI Cable; sunny days in February…

Things I love today: Nikko’s Diner in Oakland; NewsRadio (still…); the rain’s coming back…

Biff and Muffy

Ever wonder what I mean by “Financial District yuppie scumbag”? Here’s a classic, almost cliché example I witnessed today in the actual Financial District involving an actual yuppie scumbag:

Biff was sitting in his BMW, chatting away on his cell phone. He was double-parked in the path of a bus. The bus could not get around him. The bus driver blew his horn.

Biff was obviously unconcerned about anything but his conversation, and about making sure everyone knew he was more important than any of the lowly slobs on the bus. Biff would not move. Period. After a few minutes, Biff even got out of his BMW to yell at the bus driver rather than move his car ten feet.

Biff is an asshole. Biff deserved to have things thrown at him by the passengers on the bus. Biff is so self-obsessed that he believed himself to be the victim (“how dare he interrupt my important business call”) even though Biff himself was clearly the one in the wrong.

Biff reminds me of another Financial District yuppie scumbag (let’s call her “Muffy”) who once threatened to sue ME when I grabbed her hands and told her to stop poking me in the face and screaming at me.

Biff and Muffy are becoming way too common in San Francisco these days.

Biff and Muffy must be stopped.

Planet SOMA: It’s incrediburgable!

I’ve spent my entire Saturday doing some long overdue maintenance on the site. I didn’t plan it that way, but I just got started and couldn’t stop. There’s a little more to be done, but you can check out the re-structured Streets of San Francisco, including an expanded Neighborhoods section and new individual pages on restaurants and non-upscale places to shop.

In addition, I’m redesigning Folsom Street in the 70’s and adding some new content I’ve picked up via email. There’s more to come. I’ve also updated About Yer Humble Host ever so slightly.

Otherwise, I’ve spent the weekend giving HTML lessons to friends, eating lots of Indian food at my former boss’s going away (to Paris) party, and wondering just how long it takes for one’s virginity to grow back after not having sex for a while.

My biggest regret is the frozen pizza I had for lunch. My biggest surpise is that I haven’t turned on the TV or radio all day. My biggest embarrassment is that the phone has not rung. Not once…

I think the situation calls for a shower and a beer. Not necessarily in that order.

I’m off to brave Folsom Street on a Saturday night. If I’m not back in two days, it means I’m in jail for killing some idiot from the Marina or Walnut Creek who got in my way.

9 April 1999

Hallelujah! McDonald’s has added sexual orientation to its non-dicrimination policy. Now queers have the right to cook really vile-tasting fast food for five bucks an hour. I’d imagine domestic partner benefits aren’t an issue. Does Master Ronald even OFFER benefits to his plantation workers? Maybe just to the overseers…

Maybe they need a visit from Michael Moore and crew. Yer humble host is most excited about his new show, The Awful Truth, which starts this weekend on Bravo. Michael Moore rules the universe as I currently see it. Among the planned excursions on the show: Michael drives a van full of sodomites through states which still have sodomy laws, videotaping the felonies they commit therein.

Beats hell out of another Friends re-run, huh?

In other breaking news, I’ve managed (thanks to Dan) to obtain something I’ve been wanting for a long time: an original Charles Chips cannister. For those of you who have no clue what a Charles Chip might be, this was a company which used to do weekly home delivery of potato chips. Yes, it sounds as strange to me as it does to you.

My aunt next door got Charles Chips delivered. Most of my other neighbors did too. I always felt a little inadequate as a child because we never had one of these cans in my house. Mom and Dad boughts Lay’s at Winn-Dixie instead.

But now I have one. My life is almost complete.

13 April 1999

So yesterday sucked, but I’m well-fed and relatively happy today. Amazing what a few quality moments in the frozen-food aisle at Costco can do.

Mmmmm…bulk shopping. Ten-packs of videotapes, mayonnaise in jars the size the size of some small cars, and mile-long frozen kielbasa. Boxed sets of Andy Griffith Show re-runs and Teletubbies adventures. All the second-rate Disney movies and books by Tom Brokaw. And, of course, the piece de resistance: the food counter with those “hot dog and a Coke for 69 cents” or whatever combos. What’s not to love?

Speaking of consumer frenzy, why is it that I always buy a bunch of three bananas at the store and always (without fail) end up eating one and eventually throwing away the other two?

Still speaking of consumer frenzy, they just mentioned both Kinko’s and Photoshop on “King of the Hill”. Whatever happened to the Megalomart?

And speaking of prime time cartoons, I’m sorry to hear that Wilma Flintstone is dead. I’m even sorrier that, if I’d said “Jean Vander Pyl is dead”, no one would know who I was talking about.

Still speaking of prime time cartoons, SF Mayor Willie Brown is doing his own show on cable TV. How much do you bet he won’t be asking himself many hard questions? And how much do you bet he’ll always be quite fashionably dressed?

And speaking of fashionable, what is this fixation that very faggot in America has with Abercrombie and Fitch all of a sudden? I found more links to THEIR web site than I did to the Advocate while researching the April Fool’s gag. It’s sort of become an instant cliche. I just don’t get it…

And yes, I’ll stop now, before I start another completely random free association…

Stupid Parents

So just exactly when did parents become so convinced that (a) their offspring is welcome in every situation and (b) the needs and wants of said offspring outweigh those of all other individuals nearby?

Recently, I was at a demolition. There was this cute little family with a stroller. What the hell were these idiots thinking by bringing a baby to something like the implosion of a 16-story building? This thing was LOUD. Dust and smoke enveloped the surrounding area. This was no place for a toddler.

And, of course, Mom and Dad not only brought the kid. They also argued with the cops, trying to get even CLOSER than the barriers allowed. For the sake of their child, I hope whatever defective gene its parents have skips a generation.

After the blast, we crowded onto a streetcar, and I mean “standing room only” (and not much of that). Part of the problem was this stupid bitch with a stroller. A BIG stroller. It was parked in the middle of the aisle. In the first row of seats. By the fucking DOOR.

Mom and friend had obviously gotten on before the crowd hit. They could have chosen any seat on the train. They could have brought along a foldable stroller. They chose, however, to park the damned thing right in the path of everyone getting on or off the train.

I fear for the poor child with the mother who is not only an idiot, but an INCONSIDERATE idiot…

Come Join the People of AARP

I’ve been invited to join the AARP.

This is pretty amazing, considering that (a) the minimum age for membership is 50, and (b) the AARP were early pioneers in the use of invasive, privacy-compromising monster databases, and thus they should realize that I’m not even CLOSE to 50.

I’m torn. Should I lie about my age and send in my eight bucks, so I can get all those fabulous discounts at places like EconoLodge and Denny’s and Wal-Mart? Or should I just hang on to my invitation for fifteen years until I’m really eligible?

In an effort to stave off senility for a few hours, I took a really long walk on Sunday. When I say “long walk”, I mean a five or six mile mega-hike around the city, from China Basin to Chinatown, from the Financial District to Union Square. A couple of realizations in the process:

  • The Financial District is boring just about any day of the week and provides an unpleasant lull to any stroll.
  • A disturbing number of German tourists eat at the Burger King at Powell and Market.
  • An encouraging number of skateboarders still ignore the “no skateboarding” signs along the Embarcadero.
  • It’s damned difficult to find a Coke on certain streets in Chinatown.
  • A mildly sunburned scalp is a very unpleasant thing.

More exciting missives to come, I’m sure…

Wellness

OK, maybe this rant is about ten years too late, but isn’t “wellness” just about one of the most annoying and pointless words imaginable? Just what is so incredibly fabulous about “wellness” as oppposed, for example, to that old standby “health”?

I really hate stupid, contrived terms created to give “new energy” or “nuance” to completely serviceable words which already exist. Sort of like calling an overpriced condo an “artists’ live/work loft” for example. Or perhaps the way that the SF Municipal Railway refers unbendingly to “motor coaches” and “trolleys” when they mean “buses”. Yes, I realize that the former run on diesel fuel and the latter are electric, but who the hell cares?