Category: Stupidity

Wellness

OK, maybe this rant is about ten years too late, but isn’t “wellness” just about one of the most annoying and pointless words imaginable? Just what is so incredibly fabulous about “wellness” as oppposed, for example, to that old standby “health”?

I really hate stupid, contrived terms created to give “new energy” or “nuance” to completely serviceable words which already exist. Sort of like calling an overpriced condo an “artists’ live/work loft” for example. Or perhaps the way that the SF Municipal Railway refers unbendingly to “motor coaches” and “trolleys” when they mean “buses”. Yes, I realize that the former run on diesel fuel and the latter are electric, but who the hell cares?

Come Join the People of AARP

I’ve been invited to join the AARP.

This is pretty amazing, considering that (a) the minimum age for membership is 50, and (b) the AARP were early pioneers in the use of invasive, privacy-compromising monster databases, and thus they should realize that I’m not even CLOSE to 50.

I’m torn. Should I lie about my age and send in my eight bucks, so I can get all those fabulous discounts at places like EconoLodge and Denny’s and Wal-Mart? Or should I just hang on to my invitation for fifteen years until I’m really eligible?

In an effort to stave off senility for a few hours, I took a really long walk on Sunday. When I say “long walk”, I mean a five or six mile mega-hike around the city, from China Basin to Chinatown, from the Financial District to Union Square. A couple of realizations in the process:

  • The Financial District is boring just about any day of the week and provides an unpleasant lull to any stroll.
  • A disturbing number of German tourists eat at the Burger King at Powell and Market.
  • An encouraging number of skateboarders still ignore the “no skateboarding” signs along the Embarcadero.
  • It’s damned difficult to find a Coke on certain streets in Chinatown.
  • A mildly sunburned scalp is a very unpleasant thing.

More exciting missives to come, I’m sure…

The Best Way to Cure a Cold

Imagine you’re getting a cold. What are you going to do? Take the wimpy way out and stay in bed drinking lots of fluids? Or go on a boat in the middle of San Francisco Bay on a cold, wet, windy, foggy day?

Yer humble host chose the latter option. Does this qualify for me for the “tourguide of the year” award? Or should I just write an Idiot Factor column about myself? Oh well. Erik got good views of the bridge (from the underside) and I got good greens at Kelly’s. Plus it was my idea so I have only myself to blame.

So anyway, now I’m tired, I have a scratchy throat, and I’m turning my attention to Mother’s Day and other exciting May events, even though I can’t really think of any exciting May events right off hand.

Tomorrow, I may start catching up on the email, editorialize about efforts to reopen bathhouses in San Francisco, and maybe even name some of the plants. But tonight I’m going to watch cartoons and go to bed.

Stupid Parents

So just exactly when did parents become so convinced that (a) their offspring is welcome in every situation and (b) the needs and wants of said offspring outweigh those of all other individuals nearby?

Recently, I was at a demolition. There was this cute little family with a stroller. What the hell were these idiots thinking by bringing a baby to something like the implosion of a 16-story building? This thing was LOUD. Dust and smoke enveloped the surrounding area. This was no place for a toddler.

And, of course, Mom and Dad not only brought the kid. They also argued with the cops, trying to get even CLOSER than the barriers allowed. For the sake of their child, I hope whatever defective gene its parents have skips a generation.

After the blast, we crowded onto a streetcar, and I mean “standing room only” (and not much of that). Part of the problem was this stupid bitch with a stroller. A BIG stroller. It was parked in the middle of the aisle. In the first row of seats. By the fucking DOOR.

Mom and friend had obviously gotten on before the crowd hit. They could have chosen any seat on the train. They could have brought along a foldable stroller. They chose, however, to park the damned thing right in the path of everyone getting on or off the train.

I fear for the poor child with the mother who is not only an idiot, but an INCONSIDERATE idiot…

Kvetching with Kmetko

So apparently I told the anchor of a daily nationwide cable TV show to “bite my ass” via email last night without even knowing who I was talking to at the time.

Before I headed out to the corner bar to celebrate my sexuality last night, I got this email message:

Not all gay people are as educated or sophisticated as you. High standards? Please forgive us, Mr. Snooty Britches. Far be it from me to assign blame, but aren’t you being just a tad self-important?

Celebrate, don’t denigrate. There’s room for all of us. You’re dangerously close to perpetuating the gay stereotype of homosexual cannibalism.

With all due respect, knock it off.

“Celebrate, don’t denigrate”? Give me a fucking break…

I’ll admit I was sort of amused by the “Mr. Snooty Britches” bit , but the “knock it off” bugged me, as did the fact that the poor soul couldn’t even tell me what specifically had pissed him off so much. So I replied, telling him “with all due respect, bite my ass”.

Little did I know, until Sarah pointed it out, that the name was a semi-famous one. A check of my access logs confirmed that I probably was indeed corresponding with the celebrity in question. Now that I know who he is, I’m even more honored to have annoyed him (and no, I’m not mentioning his name).

He wrote back, of course, as do most of the fluffy gay boys who are pissed that I don’t tow the Advocate-style “gay is great, gay is good” party line all the time. And, as usual, he was no more specfic the second time…just bitchier…

Of course, I probably deserved it for not being suitably deferential and for not knowing who the hell he was. Or for (gasp) stooping to criticism of some aspect of our “community”.

Naah. Fuck that. I’ll just look on it as a fun story to tell in bars. Besides, maybe I’ll get some extra hits when he sends all his WeHo clone buddies over to be horrified by my nasty attitude…

28 January 1999

Score one for the SF Weekly. I usually have no patience with this paper as it’s little more than a Guardian wannabe with a badly-designed website. In the past two weeks, though, the Weekly has risked alienating its core yuppie audience with George Cothran’s columns on San Francisco’s loftominum invasion.

Last week’s column focused mostly on the insensitive architecture and scale of the new developments. This week’s report talks about the loss of jobs and institutions thanks to the complaints of yuppie crybabies who get pissed off because they were too fucking stupid to check out what their new neighborhoods were like before shelling out that half a million bucks.

Too bad the battle’s already pretty much been lost in my own neighborhood, although I realize the issues are are a little more complex here.

Intel:

As if I needed another reason not to buy a Wintel machine…

Hands down, the superlative award-winning idiots of the month have to be the fine folks at Intel. What the hell were they thinking? Did someone in the boardroom suddenly get the idea that people would be just silly happy to have a computer which identifies its user all over the web? Did this idiot have some sort of revelation which convinced him (it HAD to be a “him”) that people were just itching to give up their privacy and reveal their identities to anyone with a website?

Of course not. Someone with actual intelligence realized that corporations might pay big bucks for the ability to collect this sort of data on unsuspecting potential customers. The idiot in this scenario is the marketing fool who thought that a positive spin (security, my ass…) would keep anyone from noticing what was going on. They were wrong.

This is the same sort of marketing idiocy that makes banks babble on about how destroying competition through mergers will unltimately benefit customers and bring down fees.

I Just Don’t Understand:

I was talking with someone the other day about the irony of the fact that there’s a Taco Bell right in the middle of San Francisco’s Mission District and that it always looks crowded. Surrounded by some of the cheapest and best Mexican food in the country, I have to wonder just who the fuck eats there? And why?

More collards this weekend. Saw an ex at the supermarket tonight. Life is very busy this week. This and more will come later, if at all. Right now, another link I’ve been promising for two months.

And I’m going to bed.

The Idiot Factor

So I’ve posted the first couple of pages of journals from Road Trip 98, including the SF to Cheyenne and Cheyenne to Indianapolis pages, along with the trip “stats”. It is most flattering that so many people are interested in seeing my dusty old vacation slides…

I’ve been back in the rut known as San Francisco for two days now and I’m not enjoying it. I miss places with heat that works. I miss my friends from the road. I miss White Castle, dammit.

Still catching up on the email. Still catching up on the business. Still feeling like absolute shit, but loving the Count Chocula I smuggled in from Minnesota.

And, alas, still just as disillusioned with San Francisco…

Supreme Idiots:

In 1986, the US Supreme Court ruled that Americans have no right to privacy in their bedrooms in a case involving two consenting male adults in Georgia. This week, however, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that Georgians do indeed have this right to privacy as they overturned the state’s sodomy laws.

Here’s the catch: this time around, the case involved an adult male who was fucking his 17-year-old niece. What this all means is that fags aren’t really worthy of privacy, but when the law won’t let Bubba pork his brother’s daughter, it’s time for some serious action!

Of course, the new ruling also makes us sodomites “legal” too, so it’s a good thing. I guess the “designated idiots” here are mainly the ’86 Supreme Court. But somehow, my impression of the state of Georgia isn’t enhanced all that much either…

Stripping Idiots:

OK…imagine you’re a Bay Area mother in with a 15-year-old daughter. Your precious progeny wants a particularly lewd male stripper at her birthday party. Even though he’s fondling the girls’ breasts and going in their pants, you allow it to continue. You don’t want to “embarrass” her in front of her friends, after all. At the end of the show, the stripper bares his willy, prompted by a big tip.

Now imagine you’re a judge who has to decide who’s the bigger idiot. Is it the mom for letting it happen? Or is it the stripper for thinking no one would get pissed that he was feeling up 15-year-old girls? Hard choice, huh?

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.

I Just Don’t Understand

Why do queer bars serve such shitty beer?

I don’t understand it. Beer is trendy. Fags are annoyingly trendy. Why, then, do queer bars all over the country (with the possible excpetion of Portland and Seattle) only serve the bottom level of crappy bottled domestic beer? This has been bugging me for years and years now. In some queer bars, the Powerhouse for example, the horizon is so limited that they consider Rolling Rock an import. Guess it’s all those import duties they have to pay when crossing the Mississippi…

Is it because long-neck bottles are supposed to be phallic symbols? Is it because the boys are afraid they won’t look butch enough drinking from a pint glass? I just don;t get it…

Other things I don’t understand today:

  • Whycome we never get cool storms from hurricanes on the west coast like they do back east?
  • Why is it that with all the construction workers in my neighborhood lately none of them are particularly attractive? Another myth shattered…
  • What is that damned strange chemical smell in my refrigerator?

I Just Don’t Understand (More)

Seems the California Highway Patrol (you know…Erik Estrada..etc…) is cracking down on sexual activity in the mens rooms at the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco. As is the usual case, they have opted for entrapment (using undercover officers) rather than prevention (using visible uniformed officers). Granted, the uniforms are far more of a deterrent — and I speak from experience here — but undercover officers result in more arrests and ruined lives. No big surprise why they made the choice they did, huh?

Quoth Tom Ammiano: “they’re targeting gay men”. Granted, there aren’t a lot of dykes having sex in the mens room, but actually, they’re targeting people who have sex in public. All sociological aspects aside, these people know there’s danger. It’s one of the rules of the game — and I speak from experience here. It’s hard to come up with too much sympathy, though, for those caught in tearooms in San Franscisco, though. Jeez…you can find somone to have anonymous sex with at SAFEWAY here…

I just don’t understand:

I understand that backpacks are part of the urban scene. I understand why people carry them to work, even though some of them seem big enough for a month-long journey across Europe. What I do not understand is why people drag these mutant backpacks into crowded bars at midnight on Friday night. It’s hard enough to walk from the front of a bar to the back without having to dodge someone’s wardrobe (and TV, VCR, and dishes, for all I can tell…).

So I feel justified in giving these people extra elbow action when they get in my way at Hole in the Wall or My Place…

Other things I’m having trouble understanding today:

  • The “Laverne and Shirley” marathon on Nick-at-Nite this week.
  • Why is it that the larger and “more efficient” a company becomes, the harder it is to get anything done?
  • What do animal rights activists do when they get roaches or termites?