Journals : 2001 : October
2 October 2001 | Link this
My site migrated almost two hours ago and I've yet to be able to log in and make changes or to get email. I am not happy. Tech support said "I'll call you back in 15 minutes with a solution." An hour and a half has passed. No call. No solution. I am even less happy...
This would, by the way, explain why you're seeing last Monday's version of this page on the live site. That was the last version I uploaded to the test site before migration...
Another more or less unrelated story is my actual internet connection. It's a little more stable than it's been for the past week or so, but it's still slow and buggy. I'm working on the email, etc. and I fantasize about being caught up by tomorrow. But I make no promises...
Obviously things are starting to get corrected, as I managed to post this...
2 October 2001 Later | Link this
So email, etc. seem relatively normal again (damned DNS adjustments), although I'm not 100% certain that any I sent today actually arrived anyplace...
3 October 2001 | Link this
I love it when this happens. I checked my relatively dormant Yahoo account (the one I use as a spamtrap) tonight and had a message from a friend from my deep dark past. And I mean LONG past: junior high. He's one of those few people from back then that I actually like well enough to talk to, which we haven't done in more than ten years...
I think I may have mentioned once before how there are a total of about three of my junior high or high school contemporaries to whom I'd even bother nodding if I saw them on the street. Did adolescence leave me bitter? Damn right it did...
Not that this is a particularly radical statement...
5 October 2001 | Link this
Nine years ago this morning, I woke up in Winnemucca, had breakfast at the McDonald's next to the Motel 6, and got in my car, headed for my new home in San Francisco. It was a temporary home, a studio I was sharing with two friends from North Carolina who'd moved a year or so earlier. A month later, I'd move into the place I still occupy today, with yet another recent transplant.
It had been a great trip: my first cross-country drive and only my third trip ever to the west coast. I'd spent nights in Nashville, Kansas City, Denver (3 nights), and Salt Lake City. I had sex at a bookstore in Denver, and I'd even ditched a guy in a bar in Kansas City only to re-encounter him a few nights later in a club in Salt Lake City. When I found a cassette copy of Laurie Anderson's "Big Science" in a thrift store along the way, I realized everything would probably turn out all right.
The last day, though, was really stressful. I was really about to "do it" and, even worse, I couldn't get in touch with the people I'd be staying with. I finally stopped at a Kinko's in Reno and faxed one of them at work and I think I finally made voice contact from a shopping center in Vallejo. From there, it was across the Bay Bridge (at ruch hour, of course) and into the city where I drove straight to the Market Street Safeway for the rendezvous.
Nine years later, I'm still here even though I ask myself why almost every day. I haven't accomplished many of the goals I arrived with, although I've set a few new ones here. I think I would have developed into a somehwat different person if I hadn't come to San Francisco, although I'm not sure if I would have turned out better, worse, or just slightly different.
Anyhow, this is year ten for whatever it's worth. In honor of the anniversary, here are some never-before seen (at least not here) pictures from that lost period between my arrival in San Francisco in 1992 and the start of all this web stuff in 1996. These are scanned from actual film prints. Imagine...
7 October 2001 | Link this
About a year ago, I was really annoyed by these stupid commericials for a local radio station which promised "classic rock that rocks". Just plain idiotic. What the hell else would classic rock DO exactly? Dance a little jig? Bake a cake? Go shopping?
This year, there's a new contender for stupidest tagline of the decade: "critics agree that Star 101.3 brings you 80s, 90s, now." Really? Well, of course it does; it's not really an arguable point, is it? It might be if they claimed that "critics agree we bring you the BEST of the 80s and 90s", but this way, it's sort of like advertising "Supreme Court agrees that ESPN shows sports programming everyday" or "SF Chronicle admits that KPIX is a CBS affiliate". Big fucking revelations, huh?
10 October 2001 | Link this
Funny, I've been having strangely vivid dreams lately too (as well as waking up in the middle of the night too frequently). Not one of these dreams has been particularly disturbing, nor has any of them had any particular psychological meaning (that I've been able to discern, at least). The strange thing is that I've been remembering pieces of them when I wake up. I usually don't...
I will say that several of them have had to do with transportation. There was one where I purchased the 1963 Dodge 440 station wagon (complete with push-button transmission) which my childhood neighbors used to own. In another, I was waiting for a train at a really large and crowded MUNI station, which was, for some reason in a very rural setting, surrounded by grass and one convenience store, not to mention elevated. And, of course, the streetcar turned into a long-distance Amtrak train as soon as I got on. I think it eventually morphed into a Greyhound bus...
The other one I really remember had a sort of romantic component to it and involved someone I have no intention of being romantically involved with, so I ain't talking about that one at all...
It's sort of nice actually remembering dreams again, but I sure would like to sleep through at least one night this week...
15 October 2001 | Link this
I went to Sacramento this weekend, and I couldn't sleep there either. And now I think I've caught a little bug on top of everything else. I'm really not enjoying this month...
But neither is much anyone else, evidently...
17 October 2001 | Link this
Happy birthday, Mom...
I've slept. My little bug seems to have disappeared. I feel much better physically and slightly better psychologically. Be relieved; this might have been a really unpleasant journal entry otherwise...
I'm pissed off that (again) I'm not at the North Carolina State Fair this week. Everybody seems to be going, even my friend Rae, who lives in Chicago ferchrissakes. I want barbecue and hamburgers served by little old Methodist ladies in hairnets, dammit...
I'm also pissed that they finally tore down Anton LaVey's house, and I never once went by to look at it and take pictures...
While I'm at it, I'm nervous that I'm starting work on my first website in a language I don't speak. I'm also pleased to announce that The Hyaena is now one of us cool kids with his own domain...
22 October 2001 | Link this
What attention span?
- The people I most worry about during these anthrax scares are the letter carriers. And not for the reasons you think. My fear is that some of them are going to snap and do unspeakable violence to the next idiot frat boy who cracks an anthrax joke, chuckling and thinking he's probably the first one all day who was "original" enough to think of it.
- Yes, these are the same frat idiots who run around yelling "hot enough for you?" when it's 110 outside.
- Yes, I work with one of these idiots.
- Biggest score of the weekend: a cheap CD which sounds like it was mastered from a warped 8-track, but contains the song "Winchester Cathedral" by the New Vaudeville Band.
- Children should not be heard and should only be seen from a great distance.
- Sunday the 14th was one of the hottest days of the year. On Sunday the 21st, I almost turned on the heat for the first time. Ahhh, October.
- Best find (as opposed to score) of the weekend: a semi-abandoned laundromat in Mountain View, where Jamie and I did our laundry (mine being a considerable amount) in realtive peace.
- Second biggest: finding an Albertsons down the street from it, which was closing for good and selling out its entire stock (sale items included) for 25% off. I'll have canned tomatoes, cooking spray, and Beef-a-Roni until the end of time.
- Why have I suddenly developed this fascination with Oswald from "The Drew Carey Show"? It can't be healthy...
- Has anyone other than me noticed that all these super-patriotic commercials and public service announcements lately are disarmingly similar in production, tone, and music to those "free speech" announcements that ran at the beginning of almost every commercial porn video a few years back?
- And has anyone considered what a good idea it might be to get some free speech announcements on the air right now, before people forget what it is?
23 October 2001 | Link this
Duncan and Rick are coming to SF for Christmas. At least there's some good news...
Which is nice, since I was called a "weather pussy" today. My self-esteem is suffering greatly. And we prefer the terms "weather wimp" or (even better) "differently climatized" around these parts, thanks...
For the weekend: adventures in Fresnoland. For tonight: moving the car, more work on a website in a language I don't speak, writing several checks to several doctors, and scurrying off to Safeway with whatever money might be left...
25 October 2001 | Link this
Leaving town for a couple of days. Don't expect email to be answered, even if it's "urgent"...
28 October 2001 | Link this
I'm home. All in all, I think it was the best weekend I've ever spent in Fresno, but that's all I'm saying tonight because the sleep deprivation side effects are kicking in. Pictures, commentary and all that sort of thing tomorrow. Perhaps...
You may resume your email now. And I'll resume answering it at my own pace...
29 October 2001 | Link this
Y'know, it's touchy meeting someone I really like and talking about it on the website, especially since I'm known for a sort of detached cynicism and the slightest trace of irony. I come off sounding either insincere or unnervingly gooey. Therefore I'm not going to try at all right now. So there...
Fresno revisited again: read about it...
30 October 2001 | Link this
I got this message too and fear others may have gotten it by having websites I link to. This is, by the way, not an ordinary spammer; he used my email form to send it to me individually. I read him the riot act, and after three rounds of email, he managed to sound out all the words and realize he'd done something sort of stupid...
Note to clueless idiot: the fact that you did a Yahoo search on the term "sex club" does not necessarily indicate that every page found will be owned by a sex club or will even be about sex clubs in any way. Nor will the links found on said page...
Wow. Context. What an interesting and elusive concept...
I would never email someone from a website without actually reading a significant portion of what he or she had to say first. But then again, I don't have a large sex club building I need to unload quickly...
30 October 2001 Later | Link this
So there are these people who have been protesting in front of the building where I work part-time. They're apparently not happy with the property management company which runs the building for hiring a certain contractor. It's a cute protest; they have a giant inflatable rat to symbolize "rat contractor".
Their issues are that this contractor has no respect for labor, the community, nor people's families. Unfortunately, they seem completely unable to tell anyone WHY they feel this way. I took one of their flyers, hoping it might shed some light on the subject and offer some specifics. It didn't; all it said was pretty much that "they are bad and we don't like them...waaahhhh..."
Maybe the contractor really is completely and totally evil. I'd never know from their protest and I'd be hard-pressed to care. I guess they're operating on the assumption that passers-by will naturally be appalled by any hint of labor or human rights violations, whether backed by any specific evidence or not.
In San Francisco, where gullability rules, conspiracy theories are gospel, and critical thinking is too often an afterthought, it's probably a pretty safe tactic...
31 October 2001 | Link this
Note to my bus driver from this afternoon: a little patchouli goes a REALLY long way...
Unrelated: a friend of mine asked if I was going to the Castro for Halloween tonight. OK, it wasn't a very close friend, but still. Everyone knows I go out of my way to avoid the Castro even at the most inocuous of times. Why on earth would I go down there on a night when the streets would be full of half a million people, 499,992 of whom would really get on my nerves?