Sex and Links

So much for quality control. Seems I left Ginger out of my revamped links page earlier today and made Groc cry. I am evil. I have now rectified said error.

I put my dick up a boy’s butt last night while several people cheered us on. That was a nice and unexpected diversion. And I now have your undivided attention, I’ll bet. Good.

Superlatives of the weekend so far:

  • Best unexpected 1980s song heard in the corner sex bar: “Nowhere Girl” by B-Movie.
  • Best burger joint: Burger Road in Pleasant Hill.
  • Worst case of indigestion: Mine. Right now.
  • Most annoying commercial: the new Chili’s spot with all the idiots chanting about a “slam-a-boom-a-jamma-rama” or whatever.

You may have noticed I’ve done a little fidgeting with the front page. I like it. The left navigation bar is shorter, which means I don;t have to write quite as much here to keep a balanced look. Of course, I CAN still write more. I just don’t have to if I don’t feel like it.

I’ve also, as mentioned above, streamlined the links a bit. If I’ve left some things out which should still be there, please let me know. But keep in mind that some of the missing links are missing on purpose.

Going to sleep now. I sense that I’ll be waking up in the morning and driving someplace a long way away. I’m not sure where or why…

Credit, Dinner, Etc.

Seems I have good credit again, judging from the numerous pre-approved triple-platinum credit card offers I’m receiving lately. I guess that’s a good thing…

I don’t use credit cards much anymore, having learned a relatively painful series of lessons about them in my early twenties. Of course, you know what they say about the 1980s: if you didn’t have credit card problems, you weren’t really there. Now I just hold a few low-limit ones for car rentals, etc., and try to pay cash whenever possible.

Trust me: it’s better this way.

Had dinner in Oakland last night with Matthew (who’s leaving): meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, and creamed spinach at the Red Tractor Cafe, followed by a quick beer at the Bay Area’s oldest continuously-operating queer bar, the White Horse.

Had I closed my eyes for a minute, I would have sworn I was in Greensboro at the Palms. The place was so very NOT San Francisco. To start with, there were girls and boys in the very same queer bar. Imagine that. And many of them were actually smiling and looking as if they were enjoying being there. There were no fashion victims, no chemical catastrophes, and no one was on a cell phone. It was great, if a bit perky for my tastes.

Of course, there was no one having sex in a back room either, but there are always tradeoffs, I guess.

Tonight? Baked chicken for dinner, followed by a little TV, and maybe later an attempt at sex in a back room (or maybe even at home). After that, I’ll try to get all the sleep I missed last night as I kep thinking “one more chapter and I’ll go to bed.”

Love, Hate, and Groceries

OK, who other than me thinks the newest Pepsi One commercial is just plain stupid? I’m talking about the one with the ferry passengers who can’t tell the difference between Pepsi One and Coke as the boat tosses and turns. The tagline says something about how its “breakthrough sweetener” makes the stuff taste really close to regular cola. The way it reads, though, is “Pepsi One. Almost as good as Coke.”

No wonder they’re number two…

For your amusement today: the new edition of Did You Bring Bottles, with lots of new pictures and features. It is, no doubt, everything you’ve been dreaming of for weeks. I’ll add an annoying animated banner tomorrow.

Things I hate today:

  • Restaurants which only serve Pepsi.
  • Restaurants which only serve Pepsi and don’t at least have Dr. Pepper as an alternate.
  • The way antibiotics fuck with the digestive system.

Things I love today:

  • The Chronicle for a quarter.
  • Safeway Cookies & Cream Ice Cream.
  • My new books.

Strep and Sneakers

Suck a little dick and get strep throat. Goddamned still-intact tonsils. I should’ve known better…

I know that’s not really the reason, but it was handy. Fortunately, this particular case isn’t nearly as bad as the ones I used to have during my period of “semi-annual strep” a couple of years ago. I don’t feel great, but neither do I feel like I’m going to die. Experience breeds early diagnosis. And do you have any idea how hard it is to get a prescription for Erithromycin on a Saturday afternoon, especially when you don’t have health insurance?

Yes, I know I’m an idiot for not having health insurance, so you may skip all horrified comments on that subject. I’m working on it, OK?

I stocked up like crazy on easy-to-prepare soft foods, ice cream, and orange juice, preparing to be socked in for a few days. Luckily, I’d already bought books on Friday when I had lunch with Sarah. I’m almost disappoined; I was ready to be sick. Maybe I should shut up before my optismism proves misguided.

Old, smelly, and disgusting…

New, shiny, and exciting…

Health insurance, no, but what I DO have is new shoes! My old and trusty Adidas were getting a little smelly and disgusting, so I’ve upgraded. Maybe I can unload them in the fetish items section on eBay; they were featured prominently on a porn site after all. Anyhow, I thought I deserved to have my shoes on the front page just like Sarah…

Enough of this. I’m taking another pill now…

I Love Tad’s

After nearly eight years in San Francisco, there is but one restaurant where (a) I’m always happy with my meal and (b) the owner regularly stops at my table offering me free dessert. That would be Tad’s. I even had my birthday there last year. The charms are nearly unending as several persons I’ve initiated say.

Impromptu dinner with Dan (guess where?) followed by a Thursday night out. I hate it when I’m in the sex bar and the guy I really like shoots his load and leaves, abandoning to me the other guy. The other guy is someone to whom I’m strongly attracted in a fetishistic way but who screams “trouble”. And said fetish will remain unnamed for now, thank you.

One of the benefits of not drinking much is that you can avoid trouble before it passes out in your bed. One of the benefits of having wonderfully bitter friends is that they can gain some amusement watching you decide if the fetish is worth the trouble. Ultimately, of course, I decided it wasn’t, which is why I’m writing rather than fucking right now.

So now I’m going to sleep. Lunch with Sarah tomorrow followed by my traditional Friday night dinner with Dan and Jamie. As it seems I’ve now started seeking sex again (albeit a tad more cautiously), you may even see me out tomorrow night. But I make no promises.

Those last few paragraphs made little if any sense, I fear. I think I should sleep now, secure in the knowledge that the I Love You virus will not affect my Mac in any way…

Sucky Day

What an absolutely, totally sucky day. And I rarely use the term “sucky”, because it sounds, well, sort of dumb. But today, jeez. Drama at my part-time job (none of which really affects me, but drama all the same), misunderstandings via email, and I cannot stop eating.

This is not just nervous snacking; all of a sudden I’m just perpetually starved. I eat breakfast and then, two hours later, I’m ready for a full lunch. Nervous snacking only makes it worse; I try to grab an snack and it just leaves my little tummy frustrated that it didn’t get its fifth full meal of the day. I think it’s a tapeworm. Probably from the corned beef.

Things I like today:

Things I hate today:

  • Smoking
  • Street-cleaning night
  • Allergies

Nighty night, or, if you prefer, good morning…

Corned Beef and Early Rising

I am drowning in corned beef. Three pounds of it following a cooking jag this afternoon. I’ll be eating it for days. Anyone want a sandwich?

No, I’m not really offering anyone a sandwich. That would involve more of an emotional closeness than I’m able to admit right now. And there’s the potential for rejection. I offered my landlord a sandwich earlier tonight and he said he didn’t like corned beef. I don’t think I can take that twice in one day.

Odd day. I was up at a startlingly early hour, one which I haven’t seen in many months and have no intention of seeing again anytime soon. Among my discoveries at this ungodly hour was the fact that the 12-Folsom bus doesn’t start running until 6:30. This was not something I really wanted to know.

At least it’s quiet early in the morning. PG&E has not yet arrived to do whatever the hell they’re doing at the freeway on-ramp. The workers who have been renovating the building next door for the past five years have not started sawing wood out back and hammering the wall behind my bed. The piledrivers and traffic helicopters are still at rest.

All the same, I don’t want to get up that early ever again. I am completely and utterly baffled by the thought that people get up at 5:00 in the morning to drive an hour or more to work, spend ten hours or more there, and then drive an hour or more home. I can’t imagine any job which would ever be worth it to me. Call me a lazy slacker if you like. I’m comfortable with that as long as it means my life is my own.

And as long as I can occasionally spend a Monday afternoon cooking corned beef and then trying to get rid of it on the web, all while watching old movies on AMC.

Maybe I should give up being a moderately-lethargic worker and try to become a moderately-active housewife. Any takers? A dishwasher, washer, and dryer on-site are absolute requirements. And I don’t get up at 5:30 in the morning for any man…

Amazon Wish List

In the spirit of blatant consumerism, I’ve set up an Amazon Wish List, in case anyone was wondering what I wanted for, umm, Memorial Day. What better way to ask people I’ve never met to send gifts to me at an undisclosed address! I did not, however, use the email notification option. I imagine my friends are most grateful…

The day I realized I was finally a grownup was the day (sometime in early 1997, I think) that I realized that I was spending more money on reading material than on drinking. I’ve always read a lot, finding good used book stores is a major highlight of any road trip, and booksellers have easily surpassed bars and cruising spots as my most sought-after discoveries, with vintage supermarkets and thrift stores close runners-up.

I read non-fiction almost exclusively, although I did go through several “novel phases” in my 20s. And yes, I still read a proportionately large number of titles related to my college major (urban studies), although I never quite found the right occupation which might allow me to work at what interests me.

And I still read newspapers too. At least two on most days, and sometimes more, especially if I’m on the road. I prefer them in their actual paper format; I read the hometown paper online, just because I can’t buy it here, but holding the newspaper and taking it with you to the bathroom or on the bus is half the fun.

I still see the internet as an information source more than anything else as well. I don’t really look to the web to entertain me per se. Or maybe I do, since I find information to be infinitely entertaining. But once the dirty pictures phase (everyone goes through it, most outgrow it) wore off, I mostly went online in search of something specific and if I was in a “surfing” mood, it was usually a semi-directed surf all the same.

That’s probably why this site started out so information-heavy, despite its current emphasis on the journals. I know a little about a lot of things (and not a lot, alas, about any), so it’s natural things grew in many directions. An information junkie with a short attention span is a dangerous thing.

Especially when he starts babbling. Please hold me to the promise I’m now making to move off this half-assed semi-introspective crap and get back to my cynical and sarcastic roots very soon…

Randomly Wednesday

Thing I really hate today:

More or less complete strangers (with whom I’ve exchanged ONE very brief round of email) who spontaneously add me to their “forwarded forwarded email virus alerts ” mailing lists. I’m not too fond of ANYONE who does this, but to do it after one round of email is truly repulsive.

Note to sender: I don’t have a Windows machine (thank God), I’ve already deleted this message 20 times this year, and spam is bad enough, thanks, without having it come from “friends” too.

Realizations while listening to the 1980s station while driving to Safeway tonight:

You never would have heard a segue between Tone Loc and the Cure on any actual radio station during the actual 1980s. Things just didn’t work that way. Stations focusing on the 1960s and 1970s offer similarly improbable pairings of, say, Steppenwolf and Neil Diamond.

Commercial oldies stations have this way of mushing up an entire decade into a format which says “if it was a hit and it will make people stop changing stations until the next commercial, we will play it.” Which is, of course, the whole point of commercial radio. Keep in mind that you are not the radio station’s customer. You are its product, neatly delivered to its actual customers, the advertisers.

Of course, what this means is that commercial radio pretty much sucks as far as long-term listening goes (KABL excepted, of course). It’s not really designed for that, even though some of us still do it. I my be a program director’s wet dream; I’m so lethargic that once I have a station set, I don’t change it until the most heinous thing imaginable assaults me. Which is why I listen to college radio a lot…

Never much been one for switching stations a lot, be it radio or TV. Watching TV with a remote-happy partner who can’t stay parked for more than 30 seconds (my dad, for example) is my idea of an evening in hell. And, despite claims to the contrary, there must be a lot of others like me. Otherwise, the networks wouldn’t sandwich all their new (and often rotten) shows between two hits. This would also explain why I’ve started watching The Fresh Prince after Roseanne every day.

I’m sort of curious how other people feel about this too, but wondering aloud might result in a lot of email I probably won’t answer, so I’ll keep my mouth shut.

But I’m off the stated topic, I’ve used up my space, and I haven’t even gotten to my other realization: that “Oh Sheila” by Ready for the World really desperately wanted to be a Prince song. Or a Sheila E song, which is essentially the same thing, all in all.

Back to the grind…