Random notes:

• Never realized before that a lot of episodes of “Bewitched” from the final season (1972) were almost verbatim remakes of episodes from the first season (1964). Were they just out of ideas? Or did they figure the old black and white shows would never be shown again? Strange, but kudos to the fine folks at Nick at Nite for helpng to point this out…
• Why is it that spring cleaning at work is so much faster than spring cleaning at home? It just seems so much easier to throw away old stuff that doesn’t really belong to you…
• At the ripe old age of 33, I’ve finally realized that people sleep much better if they don’t keep drinking Coke until 15 minutes before bedtime. Brain surgery is next for me, no doubt…
• Overly-senistive department: an Oakland man has claimed harrasment due to his arresting officer singing “The Pina Collada Song” while he was in custody. He claims racism. I’ll admit it’s bland, stupid, and repetitive, but racist???
• Miracle: for three straight days, I’ve managed to answer all my email within 24 hours. And get one spamming website shut down in the process…
• Isn’t porn just more fun if no one’s home and you can turn up the volume and hear every “you like my big cock dontcha” in stereo sound?
• Isn’t cereal much less fun when you realize (after you start pouring) that you’re just about out of milk? Oops…make that completely out…
• Amusing Wednesdays at McDonald’s: hamburgers are 29¢. Fries are $1.50. Cokes are $1.25. All hail the triumph of the side dish…
• The SF Bay Guardian is crying “censorship” over some ads removed from SF Muni buses last month. The ads feature the Guardian’s editor and a caption stating “They’re all crooks in City Hall and I want them exposed.” I’d almost be tempted to suggest the removal of the ads constituted proof of this fact, or at least of the fact that City Hall has no sense of humor…
• Joke courtesy of Larry-bob: What do you call two men holding hands in the Castro? Tourists.
• When you call tech support, how does that recorded voice arrive at such estimates as “your call will be answered in one hour and twenty-three minutes”? (Yes…this was an actual call and an actual estimate…)
• Is anyone as pissed off as I am that Pacific Bell has added the option of three-way calling to all phone lines at a per-use fee of 75¢? And that it’s VERY easy to invoke this feature accidentally, say with modem auto-redials, beacuse you don’t have to dial a special tone? If you’re not amused either, call them (1-800-310-BELL) and have it removed from your line. And tell them why you’re doing it and how tempting it will be to use another local service provider when that option becomes available soon…

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.

Dang…lots of new RAM is a truly magical thing…

My pet irrational annoyance of the day is the phrase “send me an email”. I’ll be quite happy to to send you some email. I ‘ll be glad to send you an email message. But I will not send you AN email. Nor will I go to the post office and send you a mail.

Just call me anal…

Still planning that Great Lakes tour of Michigan, Minnesota, and Chicago in the next few weeks. I’ve almost decided to drive there. Air travel in the 90’s is simply too much of a pain in the ass, and I love a good road trip. Anybody in Omaha or Cheyenne looking for a visit from a bouncing baby webamster? It’s been done before…

Smiley-face du jour goes to Paul in Charlotte, who’s just presented me with a free used Sun Sparcstation. My geek factor increases…

Last but not least, is anyone other than me really excited by the upcoming “All in the Family” marathon on Nick-at-Nite?

Webzine 98 has come and gone, so the annoying animated gif is history. The biggest highlight for me was actually meeting a flesh and blood rendition of Larry-bob, after two year or so of web/email convergences. I also saw, but did not touch, the semi-legendary Justin Hall. He was dressed a bit like a Mormon missionary. I was mildly frightened by this.

I’ve decided now why I occasionally hit the neighborhood queer bars on Saturday night even though it’s traditionally my least favorite night to do so. I think that if I can make it through two beers amidst the Saturday night idiot fest on Folsom Street without killing someone, then I must have the strength to survive another week in San Francisco.

This afternoon, I watched a lot of TV with the folks. We were waiting for Steve Jobs to spill the beans about the new iMacs, since my mom was planning to buy one. We must have looked like an odd neo-techno version of the Waltons, huddled around the radio waiting for FDR to give a Fireside Chat. Or at least it seemed that way to me at the time.

After the announcement, I took pictures of abandoned motels. Why should this be any different from any other road trip, after all?

Between all the leftover work I avoided over Christmas and all and the fact that I’ve been sleeping off a really nasty bug all day, I am neither caught up on the website nor the email. I have, at least, managed to upload the first part of the North Carolina trip.

Other things I could be writing about but I’m not (just yet) might include whining about whatever this bug is that I’ve managed to pick up. I could discuss how pissed I am that I can’t get ADSL, even here in San Francisco’s most “wired” neighborhood.

I could include the fact that I got email from Strange de Jim (of Herb Caen fame). I could write about how I’m really starting to get serious about leaving San Francisco. I could tell the story of the disturbing graffiti which appeared on my front door this weekend.

I could even talk about that Leif Garrett documentary from Sunday night.

But I’m not going to get into any of this right now. I’m going back to bed.

So who would have thought you could find fresh collards in California in January. And at someplace as generic as Safeway yet? This bodes well for Sunday dinner, a belated New Year’s Day “good luck” meal at a friend’s house.

Web work makes for strange bedfellows. It seems there will be a Wintel machine in my house this weekend. I’m getting it ready to serve up a database for one of my sites. Until now I’ve managed never to have a Windozer in my home.

I’ll have to keep it away from all the good computers lest they become contaminated by it. I’d hate for my Mac to start displaying everything with big ugly fonts and for it to start calling itself “My Computer”. Sounds a little too much like a Fisher-Price toy.

Long weekend ahead.

Score one for the SF Weekly. I usually have no patience with this paper as it’s little more than a Guardian wannabe with a badly-designed website. In the past two weeks, though, the Weekly has risked alienating its core yuppie audience with George Cothran’s columns on San Francisco’s loftominum invasion.

Last week’s column focused mostly on the insensitive architecture and scale of the new developments. This week’s report talks about the loss of jobs and institutions thanks to the complaints of yuppie crybabies who get pissed off because they were too fucking stupid to check out what their new neighborhoods were like before shelling out that half a million bucks.

Too bad the battle’s already pretty much been lost in my own neighborhood, although I realize the issues are are a little more complex here.

Intel:

As if I needed another reason not to buy a Wintel machine…

Hands down, the superlative award-winning idiots of the month have to be the fine folks at Intel. What the hell were they thinking? Did someone in the boardroom suddenly get the idea that people would be just silly happy to have a computer which identifies its user all over the web? Did this idiot have some sort of revelation which convinced him (it HAD to be a “him”) that people were just itching to give up their privacy and reveal their identities to anyone with a website?

Of course not. Someone with actual intelligence realized that corporations might pay big bucks for the ability to collect this sort of data on unsuspecting potential customers. The idiot in this scenario is the marketing fool who thought that a positive spin (security, my ass…) would keep anyone from noticing what was going on. They were wrong.

This is the same sort of marketing idiocy that makes banks babble on about how destroying competition through mergers will unltimately benefit customers and bring down fees.

I Just Don’t Understand:

I was talking with someone the other day about the irony of the fact that there’s a Taco Bell right in the middle of San Francisco’s Mission District and that it always looks crowded. Surrounded by some of the cheapest and best Mexican food in the country, I have to wonder just who the fuck eats there? And why?

More collards this weekend. Saw an ex at the supermarket tonight. Life is very busy this week. This and more will come later, if at all. Right now, another link I’ve been promising for two months.

And I’m going to bed.

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.

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…

So the piece of shit yuppie slum across the street just gets taller and taller and uglier and uglier, once again begging the question of just who pays $350,000 or more to live in a drafty condo constructed of plywood? And given the IQ level of these individuals, do I really want them as neighbors?

There’s a good article in the generally useless SF Weekly this week about the Planning Commission’s latest “live/work reforms”.

All the same, I know the neighborhood is not completely sanitized yet. I watched a guy break into a car the other night from my office window. It was a BMW and it had a loud car alarm, so it was hard to find much sympathy. Besides, what was I going to do? Call the police? By the time they arrived, the guy would have been long gone. I, on the other hand, would have been kept up way past my bedtime.

Note to assholes in BMWs: car alarms do absolutely NO good and often make people even LESS likely to help you out.

Also on this exciting Friday morning, I’ve been spammed by voice mail. I’m not talking about a telemarketer who left a message. Someone apparently got a list of voice mail boxes within Pacific Bell and spewed forth an ad within the system suggesting that recipients call his “information line”. Of course, Pac Bell’s response to my complaint did little to inspire confidence that it won’t happen again.

Still working on naming those plants and still thinking about that bathhouse issue. And look for some other really bitchin’ cool stuff tomorrow or Sunday…

My friend Rae is about to leave on a major road trip as she moves to Chicago. I’m jealous. She’s excited. We shared our respective emotions several times today. We never spoke in person; everything was said via email or voice mail. I’m not sure if this is good or bad.

Bad habits I’ve obtained since I became “wired”:

• File extensions: Being a Mac supremacist, I’ve never really had to deal with them on a regular basis. But since the internet is a Unix environment (despite what Bill Gates may believe), I’ve had to start. Now I add file extensions to anything I’m working on. It’s like a curse.
• Saying “directory” rather than “folder”, even when I’m talking to another person using another Mac.
• Giving out my email address rather than my phone number in bars. This just seems wrong somehow.
• Using my video camera as a glorified still camera and shooting things more with the assumption that they’ll be used on the site rather than watched on an actual TV.
• Expecting printed books and newspapers to have a “search” button.

Good (and somewhat anachronistic) habits I’ve maintained:

• Very rarely, if ever, using the term “wired”.
• Reading newspapers: somehow the physical article still excites me in a major way.
• Driving thousands of miles at a time and staying completely away from email for most of that time.
• Used bookstores: there are still few things I love more.
• KABL and the sounds of Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Astrid Gilberto, and Louis Prima while I work.
• Avoiding chat rooms and IRC like the plague (except for that brief and unfortunate period in 1995).

Healthy balance or not? You be the judge. I really don’t care…

This was just plain creepy. At about 6:00, I walked up to the corner store to get a pack of cigarettes. The owner was watching the news about the earthquake in Turkey. We commented on how awful it was, and as I walked out, I just happened to utter the following words:

“We’re gonna have another one here before you know it.”

About ten seconds later, we did. The owner ran out of the store to tell me. It was a small one. I didn’t even feel it. But things were shaking and quivering inside the store. As I walked home, I noticed some neighbors talking about it on the sidewalk. I turned on the news. Channel 4 was already into its predicatble hype mode.

I predicted an earthquake with precision accuracy. And I didn’t even know I was doing it at the time. Much better than last time.

Things I love today:

• Safeway Select Grapefruit Soda
• The Safeway at 7th Avenue and Cabrillo
• The fact that, after tonight, I will finally have every episode of “The Streets of San Francisco” on tape, including the one filmed near the aforementioned Safeway.

Things which suck more than usual today (which means they suck a whole lot):

• Microsoft
• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Microsoft Active-X

Home again. Bags unpacked. Clothes put away. Car stowed in a relatively legal parking space. Ears still popping from the flight.

Coming shortly, essays and photos related to:

• Squirrel shit.
• Raccoons.
• Okra, collard greens, and sweet tea.
• A party in Dennis Hopper’s place which Linda Lavin and I were at.
• Sleeping in the same motel room with my parents.
• Condos, apartments, and even houses I could afford.
• Thoroughly adorable Bosnian young’uns.
• The Raleigh-Durham airport and the evils of air travel.
• A 50-year-old supermarket on Walker Avenue.
• Mom and Dad’s anniversary party.
• The iMac.
• Tearooms (or lack thereof).
• Cheap cigarettes.
• How much I don’t want to live in San Francisco anymore.

But I’m tired, so all of this will have to wait. I wouldn’t count on a lot of email responses for a couple more days either, but I’ll be working on it. Soon…

Question du jour: Do you pronounce “GIF” with a hard or a soft G? I prefer the hard G, simply because the G stands for “graphics”, as in “graphics interchange format”. To pronounce it with a soft G makes me sound as I’m describing a brand of peanut butter. On the other hand, if you think of “GIF” as a word rather than an acronym, the soft G would be correct.

Question du jour #2: Does anyone other than me find it completely creepy that it’s so warm in San Francisco this week, the first week of winter? It was 75 yesterday. It rarely gets that warm in the SUMMER here. People were barbecuing. I was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt all day and still broke a sweat. I had to take the extra blanket off my bed last night. It’s just not right.

Note to readers in New England and the Upper Midwest: Please don’t send me death threats for discussing the weather.

Nostalgic indulgence du jour: I miss Bloom County, dammit. I dragged out my books this weekend and re-read the whole saga, from the Meadow Party’s 1984 convention in San Francisco to the Mary Kay Commandos and the Peguin Lust trials. I re-lived Steve Dallas’s alien transformation and re-visited Binkey’s anxiety closet. I’m convinced, in retrospect, that Bloom County is the only thing which made the 1980s bearable.

Salute du jour: Viva Berkeley Breathed.

Ego boost du jour: I was finally told by someone I’ve slept with that I seem to have lost a lot of weight. It doesn’t really count until someone you’ve slept with says it.

Diet foods du jour: homemade cookies, Sausage McMuffin, Sylvia Queen of Soul Food pinto beans, plus whatever I have for supper.

Question du jour #3: Is your evening meal called “supper” or “dinner”? How about your parents’?

Realizations du jour: I can’t think of much to write about today and some day soon people will start catching on that most of the pictures I’ve used lately are re-runs or weren’t taken by me, because I haven’t gotten my camera fixed yet.