Duncan Arrived

I love it when Duncan visits. I have an excuse to go on long, aimless drives, and random things get fixed in my apartment. It has always been thus…

This weekend’s drives took us to San Jose (via the full length of El Camino) and all over Oakland (twice). And I now have a new showerhead, which allowed me this morning to take the first good shower of my eight-plus years in this apartment…

And there’s no one it’s more fun to watch Cops with on a Saturday night while avoiding the thousands of bears who have descended upon one’s neighborhood…

Woman speaks very earnestly to cop: “I am NOT a crack dealer. I am a prostitute.”

Coming soon: a cool new diner discovery in Oakland and more. Right now, I’m beat. I may be getting sick. I’m going to bed soon…

But I may take another shower first…

Stupid Microsloth

God, how I hate HTML-formatted email.

I especially hate certain HTML-formatted email generated by Outlook Express. Aside from the inefficiency of using 13KB to send one sentence of text (and a couple more quoted ones), the message is essentially unreadable using Eudora 4 and several other quite popular email programs. Damn Microsloth and its “we don’t need no stinkin’ standards” arrogance…

I Just Don’t Understand

I just don’t understand…

  • When it’s hot and sunny, I feel draggy and miserable. When it’s cold and rainy, I feel draggy and miserable. Why is that I only seem to be a functional human being when it’s foggy (or at least partly cloudy) and the outside temperature is between 59 and 65? Fortunately, these conditions are present for a significant portion of the year in San Francisco…
  • I can’t seem to escape our alleged president anywhere these days. I was watching a movie tonight. At the end of the tape, there was a stray newscast I’d accidentally recorded in 1992. I was having a nice time watching stories about the dangerous new trend called “carjacking” and about Berkeley’s Naked Guy being expelled from UC…
  • But then came an interview with some major league baseball owners about the Giants potential departure from San Francisco. Second interviewee? A much younger (but still just as annoying) Shrub Dubya Bush. He didn’t sound any more intelligent back then either, in case you were wondering. He did sound every bit as slimy…
  • Funny. I used the word “slimy” in an earlier email conversation tonight without any negative connotations whatsoever…

And now I’m babbling, so I’ll stop…

Safely Three

Y’know, those 1980s safe sex pamphlets were right. Sex which involves neither mouths (except for kissing) nor butts (except for slapping afterward) can be quite entertaining, thanks. Especially when there are three sets of each…

And that’s all I’m saying on that subject tonight…

Dang. Somebody else was watching cooking shows today too. Didn’t work any better for him than for me, apparently. I didn’t cook either, despite Lucy’s inspiration…

For those of you following that whole drivers license thing, you can see my entries here and here

Duncan’s Not Coming

Looks like no Duncan this weekend. As a consolation prize, I have new rugs. Lots of new rugs. For some reason, there are thousands and thousands of rugs on sale at Long’s Drugs on Broadway in Oakland. I don’t really understand why…

By the way, I’m 36 1/2 today. I haven’t celebrated half birthdays since I was about 8, but Ron’s actual full birthday was this week, and I’ll not be upstaged, dammit…

By the way, for those of you keeping score, today was the first day that The Other Stream’s front page had more hits than Planet SOMA’s

Asshole Coworker

There’s this guy I work with. No, he’s not the one I had the sex dream about. He’s just a garden variety asshole…

I wonder how people like him manage to function in society. He’s over 30, but he still gives off bratty, sullen teenager vibes more convincingly than most bratty, sullen teenagers. He’s whiny. He has the same “that’s not fair” complex most of us grew out of at 16. This is not just Peter Pan Syndrome; he literally never grew up…

And to top it off, he’s probably the rudest, most inconsiderate person I have ever known. He slams into people and excuses himself grudgingly (if at all). He assumes that everyone’s food, newspapers, whatever, are community property, without waiting for an invitation (or even asking, most of the time). He can’t even be bothered to step out of the way when he sees you walking down the corridor carrying something heavy. And God forbid he should offer to help…

He’s always the first in line for (more than) his share when someone brings in doughnuts, burritos, or whatever, and he has, of course, never brought it anything himself. It goes without saying that he’s less than stellar in his job performance, and defensive when criticized…

Did I mention that he takes things? And that he gets really pissy when you call him on it? Yeah, probably…

The thing that really baffles me is that he manages to be employed or to have friends at all…

This is one case where I really have to blame the parents. It’s a no-brainer to deduce that he was raised by fairly well-off parents with such a blinding commitment to “self-esteem” and “self-expression” that they neglected to teach him the social skills, discipline, and sense of responsibility which might have ALLOWED him to express himself effectively. I can imagine that he’s never written a thank you note in his life.

And you can be sure his self-esteem will eventually suffer for it…