This is a scream. San Francisco’s most useless newspaper is starting to seem more and more like it’s the setting for a bad sitcom…

Sunday afternoon. The house is reasonably clean, my car has been brought upto code, I sent Mark on his way back to Fresno a few minutes ago, and I don’t really have any work to do. I should complete some great and wonderful task now, but I think I’m probably just going to watch a movie, read the paper, and maybe fall asleep on the couch…

Damn. It just hits me that my plan might actually involve having to go up to the corner store to GET a paper. May have to scratch that idea for now…

Lethargic? Me? Never…

Oddly enough, I actually did accomplish things tonight, most of them tiny updates to miscellaneous pages on both sites (but mostly in the San Francisco section at Planet SOMA), all of which were way too minor to list here. Now I’m really going to fall asleep…

Very strange day. I haven’t had one single piece of email all day (spam and mailing list stuff included) since a message from Dan first thing this morning. Nothing work-related, no forwarded jokes (yes!), and no lesbian porn ads. I should probably just sit back and enjoy it, but with all the ISP trouble I’ve had lately, I can’t help wondering if something’s up. Still, I sent myself a test message from a Yahoo account and received it quite promptly…

Maybe it’s just that no one likes me anymore. Or maybe it’s just karmic revenge for the glacial pace at which I answer mail. Either way, I’m pretty sure I can live with it…

Bad news: when I went to the cardiologist today, I learned that my heart rate was up quite a bit. I sort of already knew this, after a relatively short Sunday walk left me panting and sweating…

Good news: said cardiologist told me in his wry and mellow manner (I like my cardiologist) that I should “always be concerned, but never worry” and then tweaked my medication, eliminating the nasty six dollar a day stuff that I hate so much. Now I’m back to only three moderately toxic heart/circulatory drugs and one moderately toxic thyroid drug…

All this fun should theoretically end after the first of the year, I hope…

And a happy fortieth birthday to Leif Garrett. His prominently bulging crotch (if not his lack of any discernible talent) was an important part of my adolesecent sexual development. Remember when male celebrities were actually allowed to HAVE penises rather than just to make tasteless jokes about them?

You have to wonder just how long it could take to retrofit one bridge approach and short freeway section. I’ve been listening to really loud heavy equipment outside my front window (which is working on one single Bay Bridge interchange) for longer than it took to rebuild the WHOLE Santa Monica Freeway in LA in 1994. Of course, it doesn’t help that it took about eleven years after the 1989 earthquake for work even to begin…

I don’t really have much to say today. I just wanted to get Leif’s crotch off the top of the page before people started thinking I was obsessed with it. I’m not. I may have been when I was 13, but it was the 1970s. People actually had crotches then, and it was much easier to get obsessed with them when you could actually see them…

I have a lot of work to knock out today, but it looks like a surprisingly (and unexpectedly) open weekend, which means I can either sit here and enjoy the coming rain or go out driving and watch all those wacky Californians (who forget how to drive from one rainy season to the next) kill each other on the freeways. I’ll probably choose the former. Either way, sleep will be involved. Pork products too…

While avoiding some work this afternoon, I was thinking about TV theme songs. In some ways, they’re just not as important as they used to be, although shows seem to be moving away from that creepy trend toward just running the opening credits over the first scene. There are still some good ones around, little ditties which make you feel instantly good the second you hear them.

Thumbs up:

• The Drew Carey Show (it makes me believe that Cleveland does, in fact, rock)
• The Family Guy (instant happy)
• Malcolm in the Middle (short, sweet, and classic)
• The Simpsons (still a contender due to that psychic bond Danny Elfman and I have shared ever since he rode in the front seat of my car)

Thumbs way, way down:

• Enterprise (what the hell were they thinking with that miserable piece of Muzak by some dismal Rod Stewart wannabe?)
• Dawson’s Creek (I don’t wanna wait for this song to be over.)
• Cops (”Bad Boys” was funny for a while, but now it’s just irritating.)

Yes, “Dawson’s Creek” is the one show listed above that I never watch anyway. But I really hate that song and I have to hear it on Muzak everywhere I go…

So now I’m pondering barbecue and greens with Dan and Jamie tonight and whether or not to make an unscheduled trip to the Central Valley to see Mark tomorrow…

I can’t exactly remember what I was doing lying on a stretcher in an office building elevator naked and trying to get my pants back on. Or at least wishing I could get the door to close so no one would see me.

Ah, the strange fitful and dream-filled sleep which comes from medication withdrawal or from installing new software until 2AM. Thanks Dan. Really…

It’s a gray day the likes of which I haven’t seen in months. While I’m sort of regretting my decision not to go exploring western Fresno county, I’m also really digging looking out the front window and seeing nothing which vaguely resembles sunshine…

I just wish I could drink coffee…

I have to say that a little Maltese Falcon on KQED was a passable way to end the day…

Yes, there’s been a little remodeling going on. It’s been a year and I decided it was time for a facelift. Hope you like it; I haven’t decided if I do or not. It doesn’t look as good (but it’s still functional) in Netscape 4.x, but if you’re one of the seven people still using that particular browser series, you’re probably already used to everything on the web looking like shit anyway…

I’ve also been babbling a lot here in the old web journal lately. Oddly enough, I haven’t been covering even half of what’s been on my mind. But it’s probably best…

Very nice cuddly, cozy weekend with extremely good company, good food, and good music, not to mention cheap gas and free CDs. And now it’s back to work. Suffice to say I’m not in the mood…

I’ll write more tomorrow. There’s a new Simpsons tonight…

My mom and dad were married 52 years ago today. An anniversary with a number that high seems to be a milestone I’ll never achieve, if for no other reason than the fact that I’d be at least 89 when it occurred…

The rain today was amazing. There was none of that wimpy, drizzly California crap; this was the real stuff like back east. And, on schedule, the fiercest downpour hit this morning just as I was on that three-block walk between the Ferry Building and work…

Which seems a sort of piddly thing to complain about in the face of the latest news from New York. Jeez, what’s next? Earthquakes? Locusts? New Yorkers must feel a little like Californians felt in the early 1990s with the SF earthquake, Oakland fire, and LA riots, although Californians had three years to absorb all the drama…

Anyway, if this week ever ends (not a good thing to be thinking on Monday), it’s off to Fresno to see Mark this weekend. It’s supposed to be raining there too, which is not really a bad thing. I like rain…

Tonight, it’s cubed steak and gravy. I deserve cubed steak and gravy…

My first website in Spanish was particularly interesting, given that I don’t speak Spanish. A patient client is a great thing to have…

With all the rain and the cold, I was feeling sort of Pacific Northwest tonight, which sort of made me feel a little Gus Van Sant tonight. So I popped in Idaho, since I’d watched Drugstore Cowboy more recently…

I don’t think I was in quite the right mood, though. I’m not feeling terribly bleak right now. A little anxious, maybe, but definitely not bleak. All the same, I was amazed at how many obvious little bits and pieces I’d missed on earlier viewings which were crystal clear tonight. Bits and pieces so obvious that I don’t even want to mention them for fear of looking like an idiot…

More than anything, though, I realized how much I want to go back to Portland. It’s been over four years; I think it’s high time…

Just think: if I’d actually pursued a career in planning, I could have spent all my time coming up with grandiose schemes like this one, which will probably never come to pass (and probably never should)…

What is this fascination so many small and medium-size sunbelt cities have with downtown stadiums and “grand pedestrian plazas” with cutesy little concrete doodads? They’re just like those stupid “downtown mall” schemes which blocked off main steets by the hundreds in the 1970s and are now being ripped up all over the country after succeeding at little but turning Main Street into a giant shooting gallery…

And why is it that municipal governments, when faced with lots of colorful sketches of ideas which have failed miserably everywhere else they’ve been tried, always manage to convince themselves that their city is the one place in the whole country where the scheme will definitely work and will “save downtown”, as long as enough money is poured into it?

If people decide to return en masse to downtown Greensboro (or Charlotte or Fresno or wherever), it will be beacuse an interesting culture has developed there over time which provides something not available elsewhere. It will not be because of some grand city-financed “master plan” which redesigns everything and assigns it a cute little name. And spending a fortune to induce white suburbanites to use mass transit is just plain ridiculous in most cities of the south and the west; it’s never going to happen…

They’ve already rebuilt downtown Greensboro about three times since 1970. Strangely enough, its most prosperous times have been the years before and in between, when they just left everything the hell alone…

If this sounds like a rather conservative viewpoint, it’s not really. I don’t mind cities spending money. What I mind is cities spending money on complete idiocy…

It’s midnight. I was restless and burdened with overabundant nervous energy earlier, so I cleaned up the house (so as not to return to a mess on Sunday) and then popped some Dragnet into the VCR. That did the trick. What is it about old police dramas that soothes me so?

In about 18 hours, it’s Fresno, Mark, and a much improved disposition…

Y’all have a good weekend now, y’hear?

Happy belated birthday to Becky. I hope you get what you want too. It’s amazing how effective bullet points can be sometimes…

Annoyance du jour: being in a hurry and sitting on a non-moving bus for ten minutes while the driver argued with a passenger about whether or not her transfer was valid. Yes, I understand in theory how important it is for Muni to grab all the revenue it can. No, that understanding doesn’t make me feel any better about the fact that 20 people with lives to lead and places to go could do neither for ten minutes because of a dispute over a fucking dollar…

Finally, another passenger walked up to the front, put a buck in the slot, and asked the bus driver if we could please get going. We did, eventually…

Why is it that every time I leave the SF for a few days I hate it even more when I get back? Why must every little thing be a hassle here?

Popped by the miniature Safeway on Jackson Street in the Financial District this afternoon on the way home from work. It’s my secret Safeway where I avoid turkey-crazed crowds on days like today. I’d never do all my shopping there, but it’s a great little hidden place to pick up things when I’m in the neighborhood. But even it was more crowded than usual today…

You can tell the holidays are brewing downtown. The Christmas Muzak has already kicked in at Embracadero Center, and the crowds on the streets look slightly less constipated than usual. They’re all still tight-assed suit monsters at heart, but around the holidays, they’ll sometimes actually even pause from their terribly important cell phone conversations to say “excuse me” when they ram into you…

Upcoming:

• Food on Thursday, although I’m still firming up the details of where and with whom. Conflicting invites. Which is sort of flattering in a way.

• Mark’s coming on Saturday. That’ll be much fun, as will the fact that I won’t be the one fighting the traffic on Sunday.
• A visit from Mom in early December. Which means I should pay a little more attention to all that stuff that’s growing behind the toilet.

Y’know, I can’t say for sure how I’m going to spend the Friday after Thanksgiving. One thing I can say for sure, though, is that dragging my ass out of bed to Kmart for a sale at 5:00 in the morning will probably not be a part of my day…

As I’ve said before, one of the benefits of living 3000 miles from your family is that you very often get to choose who you spend the holidays with. I spent mine having a most luscious meal with Sarah and Brad, and later having a shop, a drive and a snack with Jamie. Both worked quite nicely, thanks…

Realizations:

• Sarah can cook. But I already knew this.

• High definition TV is a very good thing. I pretty much knew this too.
• Thanksgiving Day is a surprisingly easy day to park in North Beach.

• Thanksgiving Day is a good day to shop at Tower Records and a bad day to shop at Kmart.

• The Tower Records in North Beach is much better than the one at Stonestown.
• Having one’s laundry done before the weekend really starts is a significant source of contentment.

Mark arrives in the morning, and I’m now popping in a movie and officially placing myself on email sabbatical until Sunday. You are forewarned…

If anyone cares, I’m testing a new front page at Planet SOMA. I’ve decided that since I can’t seem to add any new content over there, I’ll just keep remodeling so it looks new…

Satisfied, contented, well-fed, and warm. Something will probably happen tomorrow to fuck it up, but I’m pretty damned happy with my state of affairs right now. All the same, I’ll try to lose the moony glow and start bitching about something shortly. Watch this space…

It looks likely that a this photo I took, of an old Safeway in Lodi CA in 1993, will be gracing the cover of a British retailing textbook before too long. There won’t be much money in it, but it’s sort of a cool thing to add to the grab bag of unusual accomplishments. It means I will have received income as both an writer and a photographer, at least. Not much income, but still…

That was the happy news following an exceedingly unpleasant day at work, in which I (a) tried to dispose of usless computer equipment which should have been leased rather than purchased in the first place, (b) wasted 90 minutes in a meeting where my presence was not needed in any way, and (c) killed off another 90 minutes in a series of related tasks so bloody asinine that I dare not even start discussing them…

The week’s almost over, right? Oh wait. It’s Tuesday. At least it’s McRib season again. That makes everything a little easier to take. As does the possibility of an enjoyable, rainy weekend on the horizon…

Random note to Jonno: my graphics were uglier than yours. They probably still are. And anyone who wants to see those REALLY ugly graphics from the pre-1997 versions of Planet SOMA will have to know the super-secret pre-domain URL, and I ain’t talkin’…

Do you think it would be reasonable to assume that all the spam I’ve gotten in the past few months telling me how I can “loose weight” ultimately comes from the same spelling-deprived individual from Boca Raton or Phoenix?

And why do Boca Raton or Phoenix both seem to be striving so hard to be named “Pyramid Scheme Capital of America”?

And come to think of it, why has a good quarter of my spam in recent months been in Spanish, all of it from Argentinian domains? Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to filter any message with “.com.ar” in the headers, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a single piece of legitimate mail from anyone in Argentina…

Now I think I’ll go check out that secret Indian sex cult I’ve been getting so many messages about. Yup. Sure I will…

The week from hell is now pretty much over, except that I can’t seem to log into one of my client sites to upload the latest batch of stuff. Soon even that will be over and I will be much happier…

Anyway, I shan’t be lonely for the next ten days or so. Mark’s coming tomorrow night (yeah, that makes me happy), and Mom arrives on Thursday. I still haven’t cleaned to “Mom specs” yet; I guess that will cover the three days between visits…

Why is Family Guy not on tonight? And does the world really need boot-cut jeans again? Have the years since 1981 taught us nothing?

Sorry. Pretty lame journal entry. I’m worn out and I think I’d rather be reading my book now…

Is it wrong for dirty stories to feature elements of exploitation, or maybe language which people find demeaning or offensive? In other words, is it really necessary that writing which essentially amounts to a quick masturbatory fantasy conform 100% to the gay party line of happiness, love, and mutual respect in a rainbow-colored paradise?

Several recent message board postings and web journal entries I’ve read have suggested just that. I don’t buy it, I’m irritated by the very suggestion, and here’s why:

First, sexual desire by and large knows no politics. Yes, there are probably those who choose even their casual partners through the most rigorous, cultural standards, selecting people of a variety of ages, physical characteristics, and ethnicities. They admit to being sexually attracted only to the most well-adjusted “out” gay men, and shun the possibility that anyone else could be just plain hot and worthy of a roll in the hay, or at least a stray fantasy.

That’s nice. However, it doesn’t apply to most of the rest of us who, upon seeing someone we find attractive or sexy, don’t immediately stop to think about the political or social ramifications of our lust. We think about what it might be like to have sex with him. Most of us, fortunately, are intelligent enough to realize that actually doing so (or attempting to do so) might be rather unwise, so we hold back. But that doesn’t change the fact that we find the idea arousing.

Which brings me to my second point. Pornographic stories are fantasies. They no more reflect the reality of how a given reader (or writer) would really behave in a given situation than do any number of fictional accounts, from action-adventure films to TV sit-coms to vampire movies. They are escapism, pure and simple. That’s the point. People read pornographic stories to enjoy elements which probably aren’t (and never will be) present in their own lives, in a controlled environment where no one really gets hurt.

The fact that an individual enjoys a story in which the main character subjects himself to being called a “faggot”, chases after unattainable heterosexuals, engages in risky sex, or even has relations with someone under the mystical and magical age of 18 does NOT necessarily indicate that this individual wishes to do any of these things himself. In fact, reading some disposable fiction is, I’d argue, the pressure valve which, when released, KEEPS him from doing things which might have unpleasant consequences for himself or others.

The enjoyment of this type of story is not, by itself, indicative of some level of “internalized homophobia” or “queer self-loathing”, anymore than enjoying a movie about blowing up the White House is indicative of terroristic tendencies. Again, it’s escapism: a sort of pressure valve which allows people to move on with their everyday lives after relieving some tension.

Must we “dumb down” everything just because a few people take everything they read or see on TV too seriously?

I’ve written dozens of pornographic stories (yes, under a pseudonym), and I’ve read hundreds of them. Many of them featured all manner of risky and “exploitative” sex. And not one of them has turned me into such a drooling idiot that I started hanging around the schoolyard, looking to get beaten up and fucked bareback in someone’s pickup truck while a dog urinates on me. In fact, the largest part of what I read and write holds appeal for me only on paper, or on screen, as it were.

Get a grip, people, and stop taking harmless fantasies so seriously. It’s one thing to say that you don’t like certain stories and don’t want to read them. It’s another entirely to suggest that anyone who does enjoy them is beneath contempt and has no self-image nor self-respect.

And we all know the correct terminology for anyone who thinks he has the right to decide what anyone else is ALLOWED to read or to think, right?

I think it’s safe to say a lot of guitars will be gently weeping tonight. A lot of people too…