Only nine shopping days ’til Christmas. I’m not trying to be blatantly commercial or anything, but this seems like a good time to re-visit David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries. If I were less pure of spirit, I’d mention that you can buy the book from which these excerpts were taken right here on the site. But mentioning that would be wrong somehow.
Last note for the day: if you do nothing else today, visit this website. Just do it. Trust me.
Home today, sitting in one of those thousands of San Francisco apartments with no heat or insulation to speak of. But it never gets cold in SF, you say. Perhaps not, by most standards, but it sure FEELS cold when it gets into the 40’s at night and you’re sitting in a drafty Victorian huddled over a wimpy space heater.
For a change of pace, here are some things I’m loving this week:
Link du jour: Infiltration, “the zine about going places you’re not supposed to go”. Great stuff. Great pictures. Great links. Truly a site after my own heart.
While I’m at it (and avoiding coming up with anything new of my own), check it this well-worded article on why Californians pretty much have no right ever to use the term “storm”. I think I said some of the same things last winter. I haven’t seen anything resembling a storm (or even a good rain) in six years here. It’s a little creepy.
Lastly, was Sunday night’s “Simpsons” (the hippie episode) thoroughly lame and a complete waste of George Carlin’s voice? Or was it just me?
Finally finished posting everything through the Detroit segment of Road Trip 98. There’s lots of pictures, including the disturbing but exciting demolition of the Hudson’s building in downtown Detroit.
Link du jour is Wishbone, where you will be treated to the job from hell and a really nice response to a crypto-capitalist.
Check out Webzine98 Saturday night at the Transmission Theatre. Look for a rare Planet SOMA – Schismatic convergence in a setting other than a greasy burger joint.
What the hell is a Bloopy? And is it just my imagination or are kids shows getting lamer and lamer every day? First one to suggest that I’m the lame one for actually watching kids shows receives a special Planet SOMA impotence curse.
Ok…the camera’s fixed. The cold is about 75 % gone. All of the freelance stuff is done. I’ve warned the store that I won’t be checking my work voice mail. And the trip is only delayed by one day.Thanks to everyone for all the well-wishing email, and especially for a couple of last-minute lodging offers.
The site du jour is Nightcharm. It’s sort of a thinking man’s smut site, which my pal jOnnO is working with. We like…
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…
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.
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…
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:
Hmmm…this was fun. Anybody care to add a few?
I got a letter from Jesus in the mail today.
Actually, it wasn’t from Jesus himself. It was from a group of his close friends who were privy to the fact that he would be visiting my home in the next few days. They’ve offered me the chance to sow seeds for my eventual celestial harvest. These seeds can be sown for as little as five dollars.
All I need to do is place the enclosed purple enevlope under my pillow overnight and then return it to these nice folks in Oklahoma along with my check.
Very soon, I’m told, God will return my seed offering in a most unusual way.
They also enclosed a nice purple and gold piece of cloth. I’m not sure what it’s for. Maybe I’m supposed to use it to wipe up my seed after its sown. I usually use a Kleenex or an old towel. Could be worth a try, though. I need a change of pace.
