Finally finished posting everything through the Detroit segment of Road Trip 98. There’s lots of pictures, including the disturbing but exciting demolition of the Hudson’s building in downtown Detroit.
Link du jour is Wishbone, where you will be treated to the job from hell and a really nice response to a crypto-capitalist.
Check out Webzine98 Saturday night at the Transmission Theatre. Look for a rare Planet SOMA – Schismatic convergence in a setting other than a greasy burger joint.
So I’ve posted the first couple of pages of journals from Road Trip 98, including the SF to Cheyenne and Cheyenne to Indianapolis pages, along with the trip “stats”. It is most flattering that so many people are interested in seeing my dusty old vacation slides…
I’ve been back in the rut known as San Francisco for two days now and I’m not enjoying it. I miss places with heat that works. I miss my friends from the road. I miss White Castle, dammit.
Still catching up on the email. Still catching up on the business. Still feeling like absolute shit, but loving the Count Chocula I smuggled in from Minnesota.
And, alas, still just as disillusioned with San Francisco…
Supreme Idiots:
In 1986, the US Supreme Court ruled that Americans have no right to privacy in their bedrooms in a case involving two consenting male adults in Georgia. This week, however, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that Georgians do indeed have this right to privacy as they overturned the state’s sodomy laws.
Here’s the catch: this time around, the case involved an adult male who was fucking his 17-year-old niece. What this all means is that fags aren’t really worthy of privacy, but when the law won’t let Bubba pork his brother’s daughter, it’s time for some serious action!
Of course, the new ruling also makes us sodomites “legal” too, so it’s a good thing. I guess the “designated idiots” here are mainly the ’86 Supreme Court. But somehow, my impression of the state of Georgia isn’t enhanced all that much either…
Stripping Idiots:
OK…imagine you’re a Bay Area mother in with a 15-year-old daughter. Your precious progeny wants a particularly lewd male stripper at her birthday party. Even though he’s fondling the girls’ breasts and going in their pants, you allow it to continue. You don’t want to “embarrass” her in front of her friends, after all. At the end of the show, the stripper bares his willy, prompted by a big tip.
Now imagine you’re a judge who has to decide who’s the bigger idiot. Is it the mom for letting it happen? Or is it the stripper for thinking no one would get pissed that he was feeling up 15-year-old girls? Hard choice, huh?
I know what you’re thinking, but I promise I had absolutely nothing to do with the protesters who hit Mayor Willie Brown in the face with a pie. Mind you, I completely support their protest against the “economic cleansing” of San Francisco. And I completely support anything which makes Emperor Willie the Pompous appear foolish.
I’m just pissed off that I didn’t think of it first.
There are, as yet, no pictures or journals from Road Trip 98. However, I have added a Statistics page, with some useless information, “best of” items, etc. Look for the real scoop within the next couple of days.
I’m going back to bed now.
Teenage sex, oral sex, big dicks, fuck, fuck, fuck, sex with animals… That should help with the lull in search engine hits this week.
Sunday morning. Eggo Waffles and a big glass of Coke. I guess I’m figuring this quick and strong dose of sugar will frighten my system out of its lethargy.
There’s nothing on TV. Wasn’t Sunday morning once a time of cool old movies? The closest I can find today is “The Ann Jillian Story”. I think I’ll pass. Maybe check out a “Streets of San Francisco” on tape instead.
I have the Sunday paper, but I don’t feel like reading it. I’m midway through that Jim Hightower book, but I don’t feel like reading that either. I could spend some time answering the towering pile of email which is growing on my hard drive. Hmmm…we’ll see…
Maybe a drive…or maybe I could just sit here and write more about nothing…
Folsom Street Fair weekend has arrived. I’m having a hard time deciding if I should leave town Saturday or just wait and flee on the actual day of the event.
Decisions, decisions…
It’s been an incredibly busy week, both at the part-time job and on the web design side of things. My apologies to everyone to whom I owe email. I’m planning to try and catch up today before the exodus and before a possible afternoon “coffee moment” with my pal Mark. I offer no guarantees though, only more apologies if I don’t succeed.
I do, however, promise to write something a little more interesting than quickie journal entries in the next few days. OK…maybe “promise” is too strong a word…
Anybody got any information on weather conditions in the Wyoming Rockies in late October and early November?
Still working on sprucing up the old web site…
E-mail today about Loftomania suggested that I should stop publishing such “uninformed offensive nonsense” and just leave the city if I’m so “upset” by its ongoing urban development”. Sort of proves my point about the arrogance of all my new neighbors, doesn’t it?
San Francisco: love it or leave it. Couldn’t be that I love the city enough to be concerned about it, I guess…
Frightening realization of the day: until yesterday, I’d never once heard the Maria Carey/Boys 2 Men song which was apparently the longest-running number one song in the history of Billboard Magazine. I have to say I’m not looking forward to hearing it again any time soon either.
On the list for Tuesday: installing the extra 48MB of RAM I just obtained, mailing out some invoices so I can afford to go on vacation, and trying once again to figure out just who watches “Friends” and why I have to be faced with back-t-back reruns at 7:00 every night.
What I didn’t expect was a phone call from my friend Avery congratulating me for being a Best of the Bay winner in this week’s Guardian. This came out of nowhere! To be voted one of a handfull of the best web sites in the Bay Area by the editors of the best newspaper in the Bay Area is pretty fuckin’ cool! Yer humble host is even more humble thatn usual (though not too humble to mention the award, you’ll note…)
For those of you from outside the area, the Guardian is SF’s equivalent of the Village Voice or the Chicago Reader. There is no publication in the city from which I’d be happier to receive an award. I’ve been reading the annual Best of the Bay issue since before I moved here in 1992. Never figured I’d actually be IN it.
So now I get to be in the winners’ photo shoot in the morning at Kezar Stadium. I get the cool certificate like they have at Naked Eye and Pancho Villa and even Kinko’s (which was voted “Best Insomniac Playground” a few years back). I get the strange satisfaction of seeing my name in newsprint.
This is cool!
The Harder Side of Sears:
A certified letter arrived the other day from…well…let’s just say a major US retailer. Planet SOMA is forthwith and heretofore advised to cease using the term “the Wish Book” anywhere within the site, as this term is a registered trademark of said major retailer. Mind you, the only place in the entire site this term was used was in a link to another site, the title of which was, surprisingly enough, “The Wish Book”. Never mentioned the damned catalogue at all on my own. All the same, it seems I’m guilty of suggesting that there is some connection between Planet SOMA and this…ummm…major US retailer.
Another letter arrived today from this same retailer, begging me to accept a pre-approved credit card. They must need the extra income to pay their context-impaired lawyers to sit around doing Internet searches…
Funny, they didn’t seem upset by my admission that I used to suck dick in the mens rooms of their stores…
These People Are Allowed to Count Money?
Also in today’s Chronicle was an article on the parking crisis in San Francisco (way to grab those breaking news stories…). The manager of the Bank of America branch in the Castro was quoted as saying it was unfair that her employees had to go out and move their cars every two hours to avoid tickets.
Earth to manager: anyone who DRIVES to job at 18th and Castro and expects to be able to park on the street all day is a fucking IDIOT who deserves whatever tickets he or she gets. The Castro has more transit service than almost anyplace else in the city. Jump on the clue bus people. Hell, jump on ANY bus…
Flaming Idiots:
It seems the US Congress is precariously close to sending out a Constitutional amendment to permit laws banning “desecration” of the American flag. Aside from the pure idiocy of altering the Constitution to punish those half dozen annual flag burners, just who exactly gets to define “desecration”? I think that allowing the flag to fly over the current Congress shows a pretty flagrant lack of respect for the old red, white, and blue.
Too bad we can’t come up with an amendment to render idiots ineligible for elections…
As the creator of a large and fairly popular web site, I get a lot of mail….this is an unavoidable fact. Most of it is kind and complimentary and polite. Much of it is even interesting. Some of it is flat-out rude and filled with personal attacks. I am prepared for this. I express opinions. This is my right. People don’t always agree. This is THEIR right.
Sometimes, people are just plain nasty. An obsession with money will do that:
Jealousy can be an evil thing…Why don’t you start thinking a little… Maybe if you had the brains or wits to be a businessman, you could have an office overlooking the city as well. But since you don’t, you’ll just have to rot away in your apartment and complain about those yuppies who have probably worked their asses off to be where they are.
Kind of cute, isn’t it, that he assumes I WANT a sterile window office where I too can shit on all the little people who worked THEIR asses off to put me there. You can read the full text of this asshole’s rantings (including his assertion that he isn’t a racist) in the Loftomania Feedback section.
For monetary obsession, though, this snail mail takes the cake. Equifax, the large and efficient credit bureau and collection agency sent me a demand for payment. Seems I have a delinquent account at a local emergency care center, which has been referred to them for collection. It is imperative that I pay immediately or face fuher action.
The amount in question? Sixteen cents.
Is it any wonder people no longer have much faith in the American health care industry? Or that I’m starting to lose faith in my fellow man?
Sometimes there are people (as oppposed to corporations like Equifax) who clearly just DON’T GET IT. Case in point:
I hate to say this but this site was the worst Ive seen for state fairs. It did not mention the two most important facts: when the fair was, the article only mentioned sometime in August maybe, or how to get there. Also the pictures were horrible. it leads someone to think that the fair is attended by only bald white males. as im sure it does not.
Im sorry to say but I will not be visiting that site again. I hope no state funds were used in making this travesty, if it were Id be ashamed to be a citizen of California. Please next time if your doing this again to do some homework on your website and make it pleasing to all who might visit it.
Now let me get this straight. This guy is worried that I might get STATE FUNDS to write Planet SOMA? I wish. Obviously, he found the State Fair boy-watching article on a search engine and couldn’t understand that I do not now — nor have I ever — maintained the official California State Fair web site.
Hehe…”state funds”…that one still cracks me up…
Once in a while I get mail complaining about my “negative attitude”. As if a negative attitude was somehow bad:
I found your site to be unnecessarily negative about the area. Why do you live here if you hate it so badly? I think it’s nice and am happy that I’ve “taken the plunge”. I don’t mean to be harsh, but am just concerned that you may give people the wrong impression of SF and the bay area. Please reconsider some of the things that you say in your site, as there’s always a nicer way to put things.
Maybe I should just put a “San Francisco: Love it or leave it” sticker on my car too. I HATE this attitude. I sometimes point out weaknesses of the Bay Area; thus I apparently don’t deserve to live here. Give me a break! I point out problems BECAUSE I love it here. Why is it that New Yorkers get to bitch about their city all the time without having their “loyalty” questioned?
Besides, I ain’t the fucking Chamber of Commerce… Nor am I Bob Damron, provider of la-de-da always positive cookie cutter reviews. Apparently, this rubbed a reader of my bar reviews the wrong way:
The sad queen who wrote this article obviously can’t get her dick sucked anywhere and is mad at the world. Bitch bitch bitch. You wasted my time with the pointless and no too clever catty remarks. Hire a journalist.
I offered “Miss Thing” (seemed appropriate given the lingo of the message) a refund for all the money “she” spent visiting the site. Said refund was never claimed…
Who woulda thunk it? I’m (a) typing my second anniversary “editorial” and (b) so busy these past two weeks or so that I almost missed it? I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started this thing. I was just going to throw up a simple couple of vanity pages with some info about the City, a few dirty pictures, an abbreviated life story, etc. I thought it might get me some interesting email and might even get me laid on occasion.
I was right on both scores (especially the email part), but Planet SOMA turned out to have a little more profound effect than planned. To start with, there are now over 300 pages here. The dirty pictures and sex club info have become the part of the site I care least about and am teetering on the verge of retiring.
And almost a quarter of a million visits to the front page. Jeez…
In the process, I’ve met many interesting people (both in person and in text format), gone some very interesting places, and seen some…ummm…very interesting things. Planet SOMA has been featured on other web sites, in print, and even on a Canadian radio station. I even took the site “on the road” last summer all around the country.
It’s been fun, and thanks to all who have offered support and criticism/commentary, as well as places to sleep and guided tours on the road, not to mention the occasional dinner and cheap sex.
Oh, and the freelance stuff which has come in as a result has been a nice side benefit too, even thought it’s kept me away a good bit lately.
(NOTE: The actual start date of Planet SOMA was 13 January 1996. 2 March was celebrated as the anniversary for the first few years because of some milestone I’ve since forgotten, maybe the addition of the hot counter.)
