Cold, Vacation, Archie

I feel like absolute walking shit.

While getting madder and madder about this week’s collection of heinous news, I’ve also managed to pick up one of those really nasty colds that one usually gets when one is about to leave on vacation.

Plus my video camera is in the shop and will most likely not be leaving with me on Saturday. And there’s all that damned laundry to do. And I need to get a birthday present in the mail to my Mom.

And I’m out of Kleenex again, dammit…

Without the soothing diversion of the All in the Family marathon on Nick at Nite, I’d be a real mess.

Naaah…I never get cranky when I’m sick…

The Master of the Universe

So I met the master of the universe this weekend.

He was much shorter than I’d imagined. He was wearing a baseball cap and Birkenstocks. Cute guy. Talented with his mouth, too. In fact, he spent much more time on his knees than I expected of a deity.

I didn’t bring him home, partly because he was drunk, partly because I was afraid to have such a celebrity in my home, and partly because he wouldn’t offer any name other than “master of the universe”.

I think he was actually starting to believe it. One more beer and I might have too.

Five days until I hit the road. There’s an expanded itinerary with pictures now. Some of the pix may be a little old…

Jaws 2, Humans 0

Y’know, there are few meals more perfect than a carnitas burrito from Pancho Villa at 16th and Mission. This is just a thought. Not a paid advertisement…

So I’m spending Friday evening watching Jaws and remembering the first time I saw it. I was about 11, and my Mom and Dad really didn’t want me to go, especially since we had a beach trip scheduled soon after. They should have been more worried about my growing fascination with long-haired boys in swim trunks than with my (non-existent) fear of sharks…

And they really grew to regret letting me go after I bought a copy of this really annoying novelty record called “Mister Jaws”. It was one of those things where a “reporter” asked questions which were answered by samples from then-popular songs. I drove them nuts listening to it over and over again. If pressed, I could probably still recite it from memory.

I hope I never get the urge to have kids.

Fleet Week

The Blue Angels are here! Big fuckin’ deal…

Fleet Week pretty much means nothing more these days than a bunch of navy pilots seeing how low they can fly and how much noise they can make. Most residents are not amused. Except my roomie. He seems to have this strange miltary fetish…

Absolute essential reading du jour: the Guardian’s feature on how San Francisco is well on its way to becoming “America’s first fully gentrified city”. I’m impressed.

The series discusses pretty much everything I’ve been writing about lately, including my favorite, the “artist lofts” which force out actual artists. albeit with more journalistic flair and some actual statistics. And they ask the question I keep repeating over and over: why does no one in “progressive” San Francisco seem particularly concerned about this trend?

On a completely unrelated note, it’s always fun seeing one of my design babies go live. Need a web designer?

A Horse Is A Horse

Anyone read much about Proposition 6, one of the strangest and flat-out silliest ballot initiatives in California in years? This one makes me wonder (again) about the purely Californian notion that any crackpot scheme can be put to statewide vote with a few signatures on a petition. Proposition 6 makes it a felony to sell horsemeat for human consumption.

What the fuck?

Mind you it’s still legal to butcher Mister Ed for dog food or whatever other purpose, so any “animal rights” arguments are completely moot. Dogs, apparently are smart enough to decide what they want to eat. Humans aren’t.

The whole issue would be too fucking silly to merit comment if we weren’t spending tax money to place it on the ballot. To hell with the myriad social and economic problems facing California! Let’s save the poor little horseys from those three or four Californians who want to eat them.

Six Years in San Francisco

It hits me that I’ve been in San Francisco for six years as of this week. I’m not sure if that’s really cause for reflection or anything, but it makes an interesting side note, particularly given the fact that I’m thinking of leaving.

So the 1998 road trip countdown begins. I’ll be leaving ten days from today. I think. I really should be coming up with an intinerary soon. I crave White Castle.

Anybody got a suggestion on a good (and relatively cheap) camcorder repair shop in the Bay Area?

For the Search Engines

Teenage sex, oral sex, big dicks, fuck, fuck, fuck, sex with animals… That should help with the lull in search engine hits this week.

Sunday morning. Eggo Waffles and a big glass of Coke. I guess I’m figuring this quick and strong dose of sugar will frighten my system out of its lethargy.

There’s nothing on TV. Wasn’t Sunday morning once a time of cool old movies? The closest I can find today is “The Ann Jillian Story”. I think I’ll pass. Maybe check out a “Streets of San Francisco” on tape instead.

I have the Sunday paper, but I don’t feel like reading it. I’m midway through that Jim Hightower book, but I don’t feel like reading that either. I could spend some time answering the towering pile of email which is growing on my hard drive. Hmmm…we’ll see…

Maybe a drive…or maybe I could just sit here and write more about nothing…

What Are Words For?

I think I’ve heard quite enough of the word extreme lately. We have extreme sports and extreme soda and extreme fashion, among other extremities. There’s even an extreme sex (trendily spelled “Xtreme”) web site devoted to “poz-hungry men into bareback sex”. The word extreme tops my list of the most annoying marketing terms of the late 90’s. I recently heard a radio ad for some snowboard-skate-bungee-bike demo which must have repeated the word about 20 times in 30 seconds. Enough already…

Coming in a close second is fierce, the marketing term of the hiphop/clubkid generation. Lord Martine, token fluffy gayboy columnist for the SF Examiner, manages to use the word at least twice in every column, it seems. Is it just me, or does fierce already sound about as hackneyed and cliched as groovy did in the Brady Bunch years? On the edge and its cousin edgy have held up a little better, but not much…

Cliches from the corporate world are always an easy target too. One more growing our business or empowering our co-workers might push me over the brink of nausea. Growing a business makes me wonder just which potting soil or mulch I should be using. Empowerment in the 90’s usually involving making workers responsible for implementing and defending policies they had no say in creating, which more or less equals getting yelled at so that upper management doesn’t have to.

Of course, upper management is usually too busy officing, networking, downsizing, ramping up, profit-taking, strategizing, and working on goal-achievement models and paradigms. Or (no doubt) selecting the proper fertilizer with which to grow the business.

These same executives can often be found working the web or cruising the Information Superhighway. The Internet has generated a whole new set of annoying and cliched terms which make me nuts. Of course, there’s obvious annoyance factor of cute misspellings like kewl (which should have been banned by AOL about 1995) and shorthand like BTW, FWIW, OTOH, and IMHO (which I admit to using myself on occasion).

My real favorite is, of course, send me an email. I’ve already babbled about this one. I will send you email. I will send you some email. I will email you. But I will not send you an email. Email is a collective plural (just like “mail” and “food”), so I will also not go to the post office and send you a mail or go to the grocery store and buy you a food.

A close second is our Internet address: Would that be your web URL, your email address, your FTP site, the message ID for your insipid Usenet spam, or what?

Then there are your obvious oxymorons like Microsoft Works and America Online (and maybe high-speed modem connection?)…

Redundancy is a big pet peeve too. My favorite right now is sex pervert. Isn’t the sex part somewhat implied? Do sex perverts eat at “food restaurants” and lurk in “book libraries”?

Other terms no one’s allowed to use in my presence this week:

  • Celebrating our sexuality: What, with cake? or a covered dish supper maybe?
  • The Year 2000: Why not “the year 1998” or “the day Thursday”?
  • I could care less: Well…so could I. What I think you mean is “I couldn’t care less”
  • Irregardless: Check your dictionary…it’s not a word!!!
  • The Gay Community: Just what do I have in common with the yuppie robots and tourists on Castro Street other than a shared passion for sucking dick?

Hmmm…this was fun. Anybody care to add a few?

Slug

I’ve become a slug the past couple of days, being incredibly slow at answering email (and not getting anything else much done either). And tonight, I managed to conk out on the couch and miss a dinner engagement too.

This has to stop.

Maybe as I get closer to the upcoming road trip. Itinerary to be posted soon. It’s hard arranging a road trip around a demolition.

Good news on the trip front: someone interesting to hang out with in Milwaukee, which makes for a nice break between stops. David agreed with all but two items in Holier Than Moi. I’m not sure which two, but it’s still a good enough percentage for me…

All the same, my trip pales in comparison to the idea of Melty in Croatia. I wanna go to Croatia.

Traveling

Still planning the fall road trip to Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and points related and in between. I’ve narrowed down the dates to something in the neighborhood of 16 Oct.-4 Nov. My fantasy is that this will get me home before the weather gets really nasty, even in Wyoming.

Of course, another trip down Route 66 could be an option if the weather requires.

Current plans call a steamy replay of Vegas ’98 in Minneapolis with Erik (and without the slot machines), plus a few days each in Chicago and Detroit. I may actually arrive in town to see the old Hudson’s Department Store in downtown Detroit become rubble.

Could be a little jaunt down to Indianapolis as well.

And, just in case you were thinking of asking for a report, I didn’t go to the Folsom Street Fair Sunday. Rumor has it you can find pictures at Kweer.com. Enjoy…