Category: Personal

Tastes Like You Spent Minutes

Could there be a better comfort food than Jello No-bake Cheesecake? As my friend Jon used to say, “Mmmm. Tastes like you spent minutes.”

Not, mind you, that I was feeling particularly uncomfortable today. I just had one on the verge of expiring and I figured I deserved it for getting so much done this week. Of course, had I gotten nothing at all done, I also would have believed I deserved it, as a stress-reliever.

This would explain my ample frame, no doubt.

Speaking of pre-packaged dessert products, time is running out for your submissions to the next installment of Did You Bring Bottles. I’ve already had one anoymous bit of mail with lots of great information, not to mention a couple with actual names attached to them. You could be next.

Speaking of food, I’m once again pondering the idea of my birthday gathering in August. Last year, I invited any intersted complete strangers (and a few friends), and it was pretty cool. I’m thinking of Tad’s again, just because it works so well when you have no idea how many people will show up. Other suggestions welcome. Gifts are neither required nor encouraged.

I’m also interested in hearing from anyone who could offer me some fascinating journal ideas, since I apparently have none right now. If only I were in the mood to go out, get drunk, and do something (or someone) stupid. Alas, I’m not. Oh well…

Sex, Resolutions, and Things I Love

I made a boy grits this morning, after having been awake with him most of the night. Use your imagination…

It was a little odd. I haven’t brought anyone much home in a long time, much less allowed them to spend the night and get the whole breakfast package. I had no intention of doing so last night either. I was already worn out at midnight, and I really intended to have one quick beer at My Place, maybe avail myself of the backroom, and come home to sleep.

Anyway, I had fun. He was cute as a bug’s ear, intelligent, and even nice. I barely noticed that he was (gasp) 13 years younger than me. I wouldn’t even mind a second go-round, which means I’ll probably never hear from him again.

All the same, I sure would like to have had just a little bit more sleep last night…

Resolutions for July:

  • Quit smoking.
  • Answer the email a bit faster.
  • Pursue design and writing jobs more aggressively.
  • Eliminate the part-time job I hate so much.
  • Do the laundry once a month whether I need to or not.
  • Obtain health insurance with the money I’ve saved by not smoking.

I should be able to do all those things, shouldn’t I?

Things I love today:

  • Safeway Select Garlic Lovers’ Salsa
  • The idea of being asleep in half an hour or so.
  • Andy Griffith Mondays on Nick-at-Nite.

Digital Reminiscing

Vague nostalgia this afternoon. After reading the nice things Becky said about me on her new site, I started thinking back to who inspired me as I was getting started with Planet SOMA back in the dark ages of the mid 1990s.

Unfortunately, a lot of the sites I was looking at back in 1995 and 1996 no longer exist, with the notable exception of Justin’s Links from the Underground, which could easily be called the grandfather of the personal web site. I guess it’s been a primary inspiration over the years, even though I rarely stop by anymore.

The personal sites I look at regularly these days would include these:

I don’t get around much these days. Life is about spending less time in front of the computer, not more time…

Neither do I spend as much time on email. I was moving all my archived mail from ZIP disks to my hard drive today and I looked at some of the older stuff. I realized that:

  • I used to engage in serious ongoing correspondence (daily even) with people I’d never met. I don’t do nearly as much of this now.
  • I used to have email relationships with a few people which were considerably more flirtatious than I remember.
  • There are a lot fewer people using AOL than there used to be. Or at least a lot fewer of them are contacting me.

I’ve reached the bottom of the page and I’m hungry, so I’ll stop short of tying this all together into ny sort of coherent thought or theme.

Be forewarned that this picture has absolutely nothing to do with anything else on today’s front page…

Well, some days it’s just fun coming home and reading the email. Today’s collection brought an offer to write essays for an actual printed magazine (for money even) and an interview for an upcoming article in the Portland Oregonian. I think this is my first actual legitimate newspaper interview. My importance to the article will be minimal; I’ll be coy and say that the subject invoved bottles…

So all in all, I’m feeling pretty happy with today. My ego has been stroked. And I’m still happy about how nicely several other parts of my body were stroked Sunday at the corner sex bar. Note to cute spiky-haired boy: spitting is not really any more or less “safe” than swallowing. And watch those teeth, dammit…

Sorry. I was just practicing for the essay gig; it’s supposed to be vaguely sex-related, and since I don’t really write about sex much lately (as there hasn’t been much sex to write ABOUT lately), I’m a little out of practice…

The length of that last sentence might have cost me the job anyhow…

Smoking Bad

A hangover without even gettng drunk the night before. That was Friday, with the lethal combination of not sleeping well the night before and then getting up and smoking like a chimney while finishing a mockup for a new porn site for hire the next morning.

I have to quit smoking very soon. But dammit, I’ve quit almost everything else. Smoking is all I have left. And when I’m working on websites, I’m a little like the stereotyped reporter in old movies: a cigarette constantly burning as I hover over the keyboard. I’m not sure how I’d function otherwise.

Yesterday’s unpleasantness is now smoothed over and I no longer feel like crawling into a hole and dying of embarrassment. OK, I still do, but it’s not nearly as severe as it was yesterday.

Dinner at Tad’s with Dan and Jamie last night. It’s nice knowing the owner; he’s a complete sweetheart who may not be long for this world. He gave us dessert and told us corny stories. We like Don.

And today my mission is to save Mark from becoming a lonely, psychotic old man sitting around the apartment training his killer cat to do God knows what…

Dating

A good friend emailed me this week. At the end, he off-handedly asked if I was seeing anyone lately. I stifled a little chuckle when I read it. I can’t even remember the last time I was actually dating someone, but 1995 comes to mind. I can’t even remember the last time I met someone who satisfied the three main criteria by being:

  • Worth the effort
  • Interested
  • In the same time zone as me

Being both a hermit and not particularly adept at relationships anyway, it’s probably a good thing for all concerned that no one really qualifies. I don’t really want to be dating someone right now, although I’ve been just socialized enough to feel a slight lack of self-esteem due to my terminal bachelorhood. I’ve often though that the right dog would give me much more satisfaction than almost any boyfriend I might find.

Yeah, I think I’d like a dog. But I’d probably change my mind the first time it took a shit on the carpet. Which suggests that a kid is pretty much out of the question as well. But that’s no surprise either…

Half a Million

In a few days, this front page will by accessed for the half-millionth time. I find this fact absolutely frightening, but I’ll think about that in a few days. It’s still hot and unpleasant inside my apartment (although the temperature outside has gotten a little more bearable), but I don’t want to think about that now either.

I’m also frightened by the fact that I’m starting to get email from the occasional headhunter. Must be a tight labor market indeed. But that, too, is a thought for another day…

No, today I’m frightened by McDonald’s. I switched on the VCR tonight to watch something I recorded last night. As the tape started, the McDonald’s commercial on the broadcast channel was replaced by yet ANOTHER McDonald’s commercial at the beginning of the tape. Jeez. It’s not like every breathing soul on the planet doesn’t already know about McDonald’s…

Corporate ethics and labor policies aside, wouldn’t it be nice if they invested some of that advertsing budget on making their food suck a little less? I’m not anything resembling a food snob. I eat a good bit of junk food. But McDonald’s is pretty much the bottom of the barrel. It’s the fast food I eat only when nothing else is an option.

Some Idiot’s Foot

It started when I accidentally brushed against this guy’s foot with mine while standing in the back room of my friendly neighborhood sex bar. I realized I’d done it immediately and had already stepped away. I was about to utter “excuse me” when he whined in his annoying San Francisco perpetual faggot victim voice “you’re on my foot”.

Of course, I was already off his stinky little foot at this point anyway, but I finished my “excuse me” like a good, polite Southern boy. He just glared at me. I was thinking about how this happens to my poor, tortured foot about a dozen times every time I walk into a crowded bar without causing me a moment’s anguish. It sort of comes with the territory in bars, and especially in back rooms. You step on someone, you excuse yourself, they acknowledge, and you both get on with your lives.

Still, he kept glaring like I was some drunk (I wasn’t) sack of shit (I may have been). I looked at him and re-iterated “pardon the FUCK out of me, jackass” and walked away. I heard some whiny comment, and I turned around to tell him “welcome to the back room, where sensibilities occasionally get offended”. Then I wnet home.

Walking down Folsom Street, I started wondering why this had set me off so. Of course he was an idiot, but I’ve dealt with other idiots hundreds of time in the same bar. Why did I snap? And why do I seem to be doing it so often lately? I’ve done it at work, in the car, by email, or wherever I happen to be at the time.

I’m easily annoyed. This is not a major revelation. I’ve always been sort of an impatient grumpy kind of guy, but I usually manage to have a sense of humor about it. Why am I so damned irritable lately? Why am I overreacting to damn near everything?

From careful statistical analysis of my recent blow-ups, I’ve determined that what I’m doing is overreacting to other people who overreact to ME. I’m not sure what this might be a symptom of, but I know it could sure get me hurt if I don’t watch out…

Shit. Literally.

Take the new and improved Planet SOMA Factory tour…

Crimes against nature:

  • Canned corn
  • Low-flow toilets
  • The upcoming “Gilligan’s Island” marathon on Nick-at-Nite

Of course, numbers one and three paint me as a snob and number two makes me look anti-environment. But canned corn is just plain nasty, on the same level as canned squash and canned rutabagas. “Gilligan’s Island” is pure crap, and while I love a lot of crap, I don’t love this particular crap. Number two on the list is, of course, related to crap as well and to the fact that I want said crap to disappear when I ask it to by flushing the crapper.

I guess number two could also be related to “number two”, for those of you who grew up using that particular term. I grew up in a “stinky” house myself. It seved as both noun and verb (“I have to stinky” or “there’s still stinky in the commode”). Most of my friends were from “doo doo” homes. I never met “poop” people until I moved to California, and even then, most of them were from Ohio.

Please don’t inundate me with email about the term you used to describe defecation unless it was really funny…

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.”