Journals : 2006 : June
1 June 2006 | Link this
I'm not sure whether or not it makes me feel better that I'm not alone in the Great Allergy Agony of 2006. I've had this same stuffiness, headcahe, and general miserableness (it just sounds worse than "misery") for the better part of two months now.
I think the big problem this year is that it simply will not fucking rain. We're at about 50% of normal rainfall for the year right now, which means that we're about eight inches short (no jokes, please) and also means that the air is damned near unbreathable.
Just imagine how lousy I'd feel if I ever went outside.
3 June 2006 | Link this
It was a year ago today that we escaped San Francisco. I've never once questioned my decision to leave, and I've never pondered moving back, not even for a second. I love my boy, I love our new home, and I'm pretty happy with life in general, despite some pretty major bumps in the past few months.
I'd started a longer essay the subject of this one-year anniversary, but it was showing signs of deteriorating into yet another tirade against San Francisco, and I really don't need to do another one of those. Yes, I was miserable and despised the place my last few years there, and yes, I felt that no matter how hard we worked, our situation was never really going to improve as long as we remained. Ultimately, though, I did have a number of enjoyable years in San Francisco. It's just that my needs changed over the years, and San Francisco no longer met them. So I left. I'm quite happy where I am now.
In fact, all you really need to do is compare the photo above, from 2005, with the one below, from tonight. Even our boxes are neater and tidier and more organized now that we've left San Francisco.
It's hard to believe a whole year has passed since the escape, though. It seems like we just moved into this place, and now I'm packing everything again. A decade or two down the road, I think this past year will seem vaguely surreal in retrospect, like an extended stay at some strange motel in the twilight zone. When I was driving through Winston-Salem last night after dinner, though, it just felt like I'd finally landed in the right place after many, many years.
6 June 2006 | Link this
Interestingly enough -- and despite all the time I've spent packing and moving lately -- I've written several new rants in the past few days. I just haven't posted any of them yet. Two of the pieces don't feel quite "ready", while the third may be just a bit more personal than I really want it to be. They're pretty good, though. I'll keep you posted.
The move is coming along very nicely, and by next Sunday, we'll no longer be spending much time here in rapidly-ghettoizing east Charlotte. For those who care, we actually live in southeast Charlotte, but since the whole city is set at a 45° angle to reality, we have to pretend we live due east in order for the street names to work correctly. This is very frustrating to Geography majors, by the way.
Other frustrations and irritations du jour:
- Summer, with its attendant increases in temperature and number of children who must be kicked out of the way in all public places.
- The most
useless new comic strip of the year, which (like another
recent
winnerloser) seems to have suddenly appeared in every newspaper in America all at once for no good reason. - People who go to great lengths to pass me on the freeway, and then don't do so, but instead cruise along in my blind spot for the next ten miles moving at exactly the same rate of speed as me.
- Sundays, when all of those people seem to hanging out on I-85 around Salisbury.
- Knowing that I have a great house 70 miles away, yet having to continue living in a rapidly ghettoizing and increasingly noisy apartment complex for another week.
Sorry. It was a pretty lackluster list. I'll try to do better next time.
6 June 2006 Later | Link this
Since there has been some speculation that the second coming may occur today, I've decided to do my part to make certain that it does, at least for me. Therefore, I will be making a point of masturbating twice today.
I urge you to join me.
Even if not necessarily in person.
8 June 2006 | Link this
I've mentioned many times (with a certain wry self-righteousness) that I pretty much stopped doing drugs when I was still in high school. If I ever question that decision, I now know that all I need do is sit through a few minutes of Frank Zappa's 200 Motels.
Good god.
On a radically unrelated note, isn't this just the cutest little kitchen cabinet you ever did see? Oh come on. Indulge me. Didn't I "ooh" and "ahh" sufficiently over the pictures of your new kitten or the video of that stuff your baby spit up?
9 June 2006 | Link this
Ned Flanders lives.
Please let this not be a trend that catches on. A little hair above the upper lip is just fine and dandy (although I'd suggest it looks a lot better as part of a combo involving a beard than as a standalone unit), but those big, bushy, walrus-like things are another story entirely. In my book of fashion nightmares, they're at about the same level as those stupid exaggerated bell-bottom jeans every white trash rave kid in America was wearing a couple of years back. You know, the ones that were always frayed and dirty at the bottom from dragging the ground at the tractor pull?
Yes, people have a right to accessorize as they so choose, but no one has a right to look so ridiculous that I have trouble swallowing my food because I'm laughing at them so hard, dammit.
9 June 2006 Later | Link this
Today's addition to the "stupidity reigns in American retailing" pile involves department store chain Boscov's being sued for religious discrimination by two Christians, two Wiccans and a pagan after cancelling religion classes it had planned to teach.
Why on earth would a department store chain have any interest whatsoever in teaching any sort of religion class? Legal implications aside, what the heck does it have to do with selling merchandise?
9 June 2006 Even Later | Link this
Have I mentioned that I'm never moving again once we get settled in the new house? One of the only universally positive things I can say about my thirteen years in San Francisco is that I never had to move during that time.
Anyhow, Sunday is the big day. I can't really say that I'm looking forward to it. We have to get the U-Haul truck, load it in Charlotte (which will be no small task given the layout of this apartment building), drive to Winston and unload it, and then (assuming we live through it and have time) go to Greensboro and pick up some more stuff from my parents.
Still, it can't suck any more than last year's cross-country move did, except for the fact that we'll have to load and unload on the same day this time around. It's a pretty safe bet, at least, that we won't get stuck in a small town in Texas this move.
Updates may not be forthcoming for the next couple of days.
10 June 2006 | Link this
Yet another reason I want to visit Cincinnati soon.
OK. Back to the packing now...
14 June 2006 | Link this
Five years ago today, I got an email message from some guy in Fresno on the subject of road trips I'd taken and how they related to one he was thinking of taking at the time. Even wy back then, I was getting really bad about not answering email in a timely fashion, if at all. For some reason, though, I eventually answered his.
My life has never been the same. And I'm glad.
15 June 2006 | Link this
Anyone who knows me well would probably say that the photo above is not something they ever really expected to see in this space.
17 June 2006 | Link this
Things are moving along nicely here at Murdering Stream Estates. We should be able to get most of the remaining odds and ends out of the Charlotte apartment in one more trip; most of what's left there is the other half of my rather large collection of vinyl and a few small kitchen appliances.
Mark's office is set up quite nicely, while mine is awaiting a new desk, which may be chosen tomorrow. Yes, we each have our own offices, each of which is about half again as big as any single room in our old apartment in San Francisco. Mine should be very comfy as it also contains most of my old childhood bedroom suite, including the bed.
The washer and dryer, which had for some reason been disconnected and moved to the garage, are now in their proper places and again are functional, if a bit loud. The guest bedroom now has its bed, and the kitchen is fully stocked, with Libby Hill leftovers in the refrigerator.
I like our house.
17 June 2006 Later | Link this
Hank Hill to Christian rocker: "Can't you see that you're not making Christianity better? You're just making rock and roll worse."
Best "King of the Hill" quote ever...
19 June 2006 | Link this
I had no idea until this weekend that we have The Documentary Channel. It's pretty cool.
27 June 2006 | Link this
Some thoughts related to some recent semi-accidental lapses into the commercial radio universe while driving the 70-odd miles between Winston-Salem and Charlotte two or three times a week:
- Kelly Clarkson sounds like Pink being gang-fucked by Alanis Morissette and Melissa Etheridge wearing strap-ons. Which is an entertaining image on some level, but the music still doesn't do much for me.
- 98.7 Simon: We play everything. As long as it's "Wild Thing" by Tone Loc, over and over and over again.
- "Land of Confusion" by Disturbed: way to take a song that wasn't very good to begin with (though it had a good video) and make it even worse. I was surprised to see that the name of the band wasn't spelled "Disturbd" à la Staind. They were both hatched out of the same focus group, weren't they?
- The above would have been less notworthy had it not been the only song played on the station we were listening to between 5 and 6 PM yeterday. The rest of the hour was filled with three boring people talking more or less about nothing.
- I'll be missing this now that we've moved to Winston-Salem. But I may enjoy being reunited with this and this.
I've been hearing stories about the death of commercial radio for two decades now. I finally believe them. And I'm starting to think that killing it off quickly would be the humane thing to do.
28 June 2006 | Link this
Dottie's Diner on Stratford Road will be closing this weekend.
Open since 1990, the place still bears a strong resemblance to its predecessor of 30-plus years: Your House, a central North Carolina chain that operated from the 1950s through the 1990s. At least one location is still open, on Greensboro's Battleground Avenue in a replica of its original building. Your House was a 24-hour diner, something of a knockoff of the Toddle House and Hull-Dobbs chains that were found all over the country in those days, and a precursor to the Waffle House of today.
I grew up eating at the Your House on High Point Road with my dad. We'd very often go there on Saturday mornings for waffles. My dad would meet his friends there in the evenings to sit at the counter, chat, drink coffee, and harmlessly flirt with the waitresses. In my early twenties, I'd go there with my own friends for the double cheeseburger that seemed so necessary at 2:30 in the morning after a night of drinking cheap draft beer somewhere.
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this except to say that these little diners are the real 1950s diners, and not some gay-ass imitation with fake neon and old records nailed to the wall. A sizaeble portion of our male population once got a sizeable portion of its sustenance from them, and from places like these, and it's sad to see these little dives go.
I'll also miss it because it was one of the first places Mark and I ate breakfast in Winston on one of our first exploratory trips here last winter. And they have really good grits.
29 June 2006 | Link this
Outcry that 1,000 rats were euthanized:
Tina Bird of Campbell said rat fanciers were in the process of mobilizing when the rodents were killed.
"Maybe they would have been better advised to leave the animals in their horrible conditions until we, the rat community, had a few days to get moving," she wrote in an e-mail. "Be sure that animal lovers across the United States will be scrutinizing Petaluma's actions and culpability for this slaughter."
I'm sure Petaluma is just shaking to its very foundations in fear. Maybe Tina should've gotten into her Volvo and driven the 1000 diseased and damaged rats down to her house in Campbell. The "rat community" indeed. Fucking morons.
30 June 2006 | Link this
New homeowner paranoia. We have a small water leak related to one of the showers that I'm trying to get fixed. A few minutes ago, right after taking a shower and lying down in bed, I heard this sort of rumble, followed by the sound of rushing water.
Panic-stricken, I ran into the hall just in time to remember that I'd set the timer on the dishwasher to start right as I'd be going to bed. Which, of course, explained the noise I'd just heard.
It'll get less scary soon, right?
30 June 2006 Later | Link this
Happy birthday to the cutest baby in the world.
Of course you all realize I love him something fierce, right?
30 June 2006 Even Later | Link this
Funny, I was just about to write this same journal entry, almost word for word, particularly with respect to cheesy Geocities and Tripod sites from eight or nine years ago. I've never seen a MySpace page that wasn't absolutely horrible and ugly and tacky and annoying.
The only difference is that I would've mentioned how annoying it is that random MySpacers are always trying to do inline links to my graphics from their godawful sucktastic monstrosities, thus stealing the bandwidth I pay for. But I've pretty much thwarted those attempts, with a few lines of code.
I also would've added this quote from the original article:
Or perhaps it's MySpace's "social" element that disturbs me. I'm a misanthrope. Everyone on MySpace seems young and happy and excited and flip and approachable, and this upsets me. Still, at least the teenage MySpacers are getting on with the business of being young and alive, unlike the fustier elements of the "blogosphere", who just waste the world's time banging on and on about how important the "blogosphere" is and how it spells the end of every old notion ever, when the truth is that, as with absolutely every form of media ever, 99% of the "blogosphere" is rubbish created by idiots.
Especially the word "blogosphere". A word I refuse to write without sneery ironic quote marks either side of it. Because I hate it and it's crap and I JUST DON'T WANT TO KNOW.
I think I like this cranky Brit...