Train Wrecks

Horrible “like watching a train wreck” show of the season: Blind Date. The premise involves an intimate first date between a cloyingly unpleasant man, an annoyingly unpleasant woman, and a camera operator. There are two men and two women per episode. I have no idea how many camera operators are involved.

These people are just plain awful. They’re boring. They’re the sort of people with whom you’d prefer not to have even a fleeting chance encounter, much less an entire date. They talk in clichés and giggle a lot. The most exciting moments are seen outside their cars as they drive from one bland L.A. nightspot to the next.

And it’s sucked me in twice this week. I start watching to see just how much worse the first couple can get. I keep watching to see what idiots the second couple will be. It would be almost hypnotic if not for the slight queasiness I develop after the first ten minutes or so.

The only thing which might be even more grating would be watching two West Hollywood muscle clones on a first date. But I wouldn’t count on seeing that particular sort of coupling on this particular show anytime soon anyway.

And speaking of train wrecks, check out this site.

Finally, thanks to everyone who wrote in about things mosquitoes hate. Citronella candles came in as the number one choice, followed by Avon’s Skin-So-Soft lotion. Other suggestions included thiamin, peppermint oil, and Bounce fabric softener sheets. Fortunately, the city has cooled off, the windows are closed again, and the problem seems to have disappeared.

Time for a quick wank and a little sleep now…

October 1992

Seven years ago today, I was in Denver for the first time. It was the middle of a pretty exciting week for me. I was 28 years old. I had just said goodbye to my friends and family in North Carolina. I was driving across the country for the first time, headed for a new life in an unfamiliar place.

I had no idea what I was getting into. I’d been here exactly one time before and decided on that two-week visit that I needed to live here. I had a grand total of five friends on the west coast. Four of them were in San Francisco. I would be living with two of them in a studio until we found a bigger place.

I was a long-haired malcontent working for a retail chain making eight bucks an hour. I’d just bought a 1990 Chevy Cavalier for the trip, which took me through Nashville, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Winnemucca. I liked Denver so much that I considered staying there. Strangely, I haven’t spent any significant time there since.

Of course, I ended up living with another of my four friends for over six years. I shaved my head. I went on to become a manger with said retail chain, making significantly more money, until I eventually quit to become the marginally-employed freelance type you know today. Someone torched the car. I started a little personal website which became a big personal website. San Francisco has lost most of its mystery.

Everything was so exciting during those three days in Denver. Everything was new and different. I had a sense of direction and I was looking forward to the future.

Now that I’m bored with almost every aspect of my existence and too damned lethargic to do anything about it, I really miss those days and that thrilling, wonderful, frightening trip across the country. I wish I could get that feeling back.

Bugs

I asked my vegan friend today if there was an approved way to kill mosquitoes. I knew this was, at best, a rhetorical question. Firstly, and most obviously, vegans don’t approve of killing anything. Secondly, it’s damned near impossible to kill the little bastards without living under a perpetual toxic cloud anyway.

So Shawn told me there’s some smell which mosquitoes really hate, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Do you? And do you know if it comes in a roll-on?

I don’t really understand what’s up with all these bugs lately. They seem to have appeared last summer as a reaction to El Niño. Apparently they liked it here. I’m not amused. If I wanted mosquitoes, I’d still live in North Carolina.

Of course, it doesn’t help that I’m sleeping with the windows open thanks to the miserable weather we’ve been having lately. Of course I don’t have screens. Until last summer, I didn’t have bugs.

It was 92°F (33°C) today, the hottest it’s been here in two years. I hate it. But the fog’s coming back in tonight. There is hope.

Things I love today:

  • Bay TV.
  • The ceiling fan in my living room.
  • Maude and All in the Family from 11-12.

Things I hate today:

  • The weather.
  • The bugs.
  • The weather.

Here’s the Story

Damn, do I feel old…

It was thirty years ago this week that the Brady Bunch made its primetime debut on ABC. And I remember watching it that first year. I almost never missed it. The few times I did usually involved a trip to the brand new mall in Burlington. I was usually grumpy the whole time.

The number one song in America on this important date in American history was “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies. It was a bubblegum universe, to be sure. No Vietnam, civil rights issues, or junkies in sight.

At one point, by the time I was 11 or 12 (a year or two after the Bradys had moved into syndication heaven), I remember catching upto four episodes a day. Must have been a special slice of heaven for my mom and dad.

Unrelated…

  • I had a job interview last week. Imagine my delight at not being asked one single question which started with something like “you are trapped on a desert island with two rubber bands and a piece of gum…”
  • Why did I pick the hottest day in two months to hover over the stove making gumbo?
  • Am I some sort of freak? My voice never cracked when it was changing.
  • Yes, that last rhetorical question was inspired by the Brady Bunch marathon I’m watching.

Happy Monday.

Thunder and Lightning

Thunder and lightning for the second time in two weeks. Imagine my surprise. That’s more than we’ve had in the past seven years here.

Of course, I was able to experience it first hand at 3AM, as I was enjoying yet another insomniac moment at the time. But today, I was able to stay home and “enjoy” feeling like crap, although it was a little hard to sleep through the construction noise and the earthquake.

Yes, another little baby earthquake. I almost didn’t notice it. Frankly, the quake didn’t shake the house nearly as much as the pile drivers have been doing for weeeks. However, since there was no pounding noise accompanying this particular quiver, I realized it must be a natural phenomenon.

The earthquake only lasted a couple of seconds. I get to listen to the pile drivers for two years, while the freeway nextdoor is repaired, a mere ten years after it was damaged by a real earthquake.

But I’m babbling. Back to bed now. More about job interviews, road trips, and why my neighborhood is going straight to hell coming soon…

Isomnia

This sucks.

It’s 5:00 in the morning. I haven’t slept yet, even though I went to bed at 11:30. I have to be at work at 9:00. Calling in sick is not an option today.

Unlike some past sleepless nights, there were no particularly disturbing thoughts keeping me awake this time. I just couldn’t get to sleep. I was awake at 2:00. I was awake at 4:00. And now I’m just waiting for a little more daylight so I can go into work early, finish up early, and maybe come home and grab a nap.

Which, of course, will throw me off schedule when I try to go to sleep tomorrow night. Or is it tonight? I’m not realy sure anymore.

Dammit, even on my worst and most angst-filled nights, I usually go to sleep eventually. This sucks. But I already said that. I guess I’ll switch from Citra (so I can go to sleep) to Coke (so I can stay awake) now…

On a completely unrelated note, for those of you who are keeping score, it was a year ago today that I revamped the site adding these journal entries to the front page. Apologies for a less than stellar anniversary piece.

18 September 1999


Recycled photo and semi-orgasmic smile from June…

Enough of this class warfare stuff from the past few days. It’s time to get back to the meat of what Planet SOMA is all about. To be more specific, I scored three boxes of Count Chocula yesterday at Target, thanks to an email tip. Seems they’ve receieved their Halloween shipment, complete with Scooby Doo marshmallows. Halloween appears to be the only time of year they allow the stuff past the agricultural inspection station on I-80 and into Nothern California.

Thanks to ever-vigilant readers of Planet SOMA, I’ve had a very good Count Chocula year. This more than makes up for the fact that I’ve been broke all year and that I seem to have given up sex entirely.

Time for a few updates:

Assholes

OK. Anyone who really believes I cried for an hour last night over those accuations of anti-rich prejudice must really be lacking in the irony detection department. A lot of things will make me cry. Critical email is not one of them.

I’ll state this for the record and for the irony-impaired: I do not hate rich people. What I hate (and I feely admit this) is the tendency of some affluent individuals to believe their financial success gives them license to behave like assholes. If I’m prejudiced, however, it’s against assholes. Not against wealthy people. Assholes come in all shapes, sizes, and incomes. The problem is that assholes with money can do more damage and thus are far more visible targets.

And franky, I do get more pissed off when an asshole in a new BMW pulls out in front of me than I am when an asshole in a 1988 Geo Metro does the same thing. If the asshole can afford a BMW, he can also damn well afford driving lessons. This may be prejudice. Too bad. I don’t care.

I will close by saying that San Franciscans now have my conditional permission to be well-off financially and to drive whatver car they so choose. But they’d damned well better behave themselves, beacuse I sure can write some hateful email.

All other prohibitions against gentrification, Disneyfication, and the re-election of Willie Brown still apply…

Prejudice

I’ve been accused of prejudice against people who make more money than I do. Nothing could be father from the truth. Some of my best friends make more money than I do. Come to think of it, I even used to make more money than I do.

This accustation hurts me. Deeply. I’ve been crying for more than an hour. How could someone question my support for the affluent, possibly one of the most tortured and exploited minorities in America? I’ve long been a vocal supporter of Willie Brown’s program of affirmative action for San Francisco’s underprivileged rich people.

Indeed, I think San Francisco would be a much better place if we threw out all those marginal types and turned the city into wall-to-wall live-work lofts, Starbucks, and banks. Imagine how the quality of life would improve! No more noisy nightclubs South of Market or unattractive bargain bazaars on Mission Street. We’d finally be rid of those pesky artists and musicians.

Poor people are so unappealing. They’re somehow un-American, with all this talk of respecting their neighborhoods and preserving diversity. If all those unsavory characters in the Mission or the Tenderloin would just create more Internet start-ups, them they’d deserve to stay in their neighborhoods. If those damned artists would start generating capital, they’d no doubt be far superior human beings.

Frankly, individuality and creativity are over-rated, nor all that profitable. They should therefore be abolished, or banished to far-flung suburbs. So should working class families and anyone else who can’t make the cut. Nothing is quite so important as making sure that distressed and oppressed wealthy people have fashionable places to live and shop.

Above all, we must remember that the pursuit of large sums of money supercedes such trivial matters as treating existing residents and communities with respect. Who says that people who spend years living in (and contributing to) a community have more rights than someone with half a million to spend on a studio apartment?

After all, money is the most important thing in the world, right?

Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay

I’ll start by saying that I’ve grown to hate the word “gay”. I really don’t want to get into the semantics issue of “gay” vs. “queer” (or “invert” or “homphile” or whatever). My problem with “gay” is that it suggests an identity rather than a sexual orientation, and I ain’t buying into it.

I sleep with other men. I eat cereal. I drive a Toyota. I watch “The Simpsons”. I go to the grocery store. Big deal. These are things that I do. Taken together, they may speak volumes about my identity. Individually, however, they mean nothing much at all. I have nothing more (or less) in common with other men who sleep with men than I do with other men who drive Toyotas.

This is not to say that I have nothing at all in common with any of my fellow fudgepackers, or that I’m somehow “different” or “more unique” or “more developed”. It just means that my search for “community” is based more on shared interests than on shared sexual orientation. In other words, I’d rather spend an evening talking to someone who shares my love for urban theory and history or Krispy Kreme Doughnuts or roadside motels from the 1950s than with someone whose only common interest is a shared passion for sucking dick.

If someone I meet whose interests match mine happens to be straight or even (gasp) a woman, that’s just fine. If, on the other hand, he happens to be a man who likes to screw men, then we have one more thing in common. Cool, huh?

I guess what I mean is that some vague notion of “gay community” is not number one on my list of priorities in a place to visit or to live. Similarly, sexual orientation is not one of the top aspects in my choice of friends. Years ago, these things used to be very important to me, which is part of why I moved to San Francisco. I can sort of understand why they still might be important to some other people. But the older I get, the less I view the world in terms of sexuality.

I’m not talking about faux masculinity, nor am I saying that people shouldn’t “flaunt their sexuality”. I have no patience with closet cases nor with tight-assed macho men (whether they like men or women). I’m in favor of “flaunting”. I’m just not in favor of the notion that sexual orientation makes for any more of a “community” than does an aversion to pickles on hamburgers.

I’m not going to sit through a crappy movie rather than a good one just because the crappy movie happens to have a “positively portrayed gay character”. I’m not going to buy a CD by a band which sucks just because dicks are one of the things they suck. And I’m most assuredly not going to live in a pastel-colored neighborhood of overpriced boutiques and juice bars simply because it’s a “gay mecca”.

Nor, on the other hand, am I going to assume something is bad just because a fellow Sodomite was involved somehow. I don’t hate “gay people”. I do hate people who think being “gay” is the most important single aspect of their identity, because they become one-dimensional and boring.

Ultimately, though, if I had to choose between living in a town with 20 great gay bars and a huge gay ghetto or one with 20 great used bookstores and a few huge run-down neighborhoods, I’d choose the latter without blinking an eye.