Category: Work

Productive Week

Thursday’s pondering was just a little exercise in literary masturbation, I guess. It’s really a true story, but I never seriously considered contacting the guy. I think that, all in all, I was more into him than he was into me, and I’m pretty comfortable with that.

It’s good to know, though, that there are so many Planet SOMA readers who are eager and anxious to step into the no doubt tasteful shoes of Miss Manners.

Another productive week, as it happens. Knocked out several web pages for hire, I finally got an appointment for PG&E to come fix my oven, and my porn stories for Boardboys were approved for later publication, which means both that I can to add “published author of literary erotica” to my list of credentials, and that I’ll be able to pay the rent for another month.

And no, writing porn is not quite as, ummm, stimulating as it sounds. It’s not horrible work either, but I wasn’t exactly moved to the point of having to stop and masturbate every five minutes.

I also reinstalled my computer at the evil part-time job, which was no small task and resulted in much profanity since it’s a Winblows machine rather than a much superior Mac or Unix box. I bought a few books. And I started the massive cleanup which signals a pending Mom visit.

I’m not a really bad housekeeper, believe it or not. But there are certain things I only do every two or three (or seven or eight) years, like dusting the chair rail and the dish shelf, and tackling the astonishing amount of grime which collects in my medicine cabinet. I don’t understand; the door is closed 23 hours and 58 minutes a day. How does it get so damned disgusting? Am I using the wrong toothpaste or shaving cream?

Yes, I know. The house will never be quite clean to the standards of the average mom, even though mine is definitely not a neat freak. But we have to try, after all.

And if any of you happen to be roaming about South of the Slot tonight, I’m even thinking of hitting the corner bars for a semi-miraculous second Saturday night out in a row. Come on down…

Happy Movie Morning

You’ve just got to love waking up on Friday morning to find All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard running back to back on AMC. Without this 8AM boost, I probably wouldn’t have gotten nearly so much done today.

The schizophrenic nature of freelance work: I spent my Friday alternating between work on a quite respectable (family-oriented, even) website and creating a series of porn stories for hire. I wish I could say that the switching back and forth made the website sexier and the stories more aesthetically-pleasing, but all it really did was give me a headache.

By 4:00, I found myself typing <A href=”shoot that load” TARGET=”_mouth”> over and over again. It was just plain scary.

But tonight, I think Jamie and I may have found my new favorite San Francisco restaurant: Cajun Pacific, in the depths of the fog belt at 47th and Irving. It’s tiny, the food’s good, the music’s good and the staff makes the place feel like a joint that three or four cool friends decided one night (while drunk) to open and operate together.

I had fried green tomatoes for the very first time tonight, and I now realize this is a dish which deserved to have a movie named after it. Sorry, recent sextoys, but this was the best thing I’ve put in my mouth in a long time. The jambalaya was too dry, like it is in about half of all Cajun restaurants. I can forgive that. The cook was drinking a beer while he worked. I liked that. And there wasn’t a slumming yuppie to be seen. I loved that.

I sure did like this place. I will be eating there many times in the future. I should probably be shot for mentioning the place publicly, but it’s pretty safe from the yuppie invasion because (a) it’s too far out in the avenues, (b) the food is appropriately priced, (c) it’s BYOB, and (d) there’s just not enough room to see or be seen, much less to “network”.

I’m gonna sleep now, strangely satisfied with the fact that I’ve eaten crawdads twice in six days, and not aplogizing that a majority of tonight’s links were from the Internet Movie Database.

Love/hate

OK, so the Jackass Hill Road sign just wasn’t all that funny after about five days. Sorry. I’ve been busy. I’m not sure what I’ve been busy DOING, but I sure have been busy.

I haven’t even had time to dig very far into the pile of books Adric sent me this week. That’s reserved for this coming weekend and should take about six months or so. I’m, talking a LOT of books.

Part of what I’ve been doing is research for Bottles (and the upcoming made for TV movie, no doubt). Lurking around all those college libraries, along with listening to a couple of friends talking about college registration, has uncovered a mildly nagging desire in me to go back to school. It’s reminded me that one of the situations in which I’m truly contented is when I’m researching some major project. You’d think there could be a career in that somewhere.

I’ve also been working. Two TV station sites, two porn sites, and miscellaneous other projects. I’ve also been eating horribly, which usually happens when I’m working a lot. But we had nice, healthy Ethiopian food on Friday night, so that cancels out all the crap, right?

Things I hate today:

  • Libraries which have everything I need stored in some inaccessible off-site warehouse.
  • My low-flow toilet (again).

Things I love today:

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.

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…

The Weekend

The weekend’s passed pretty damned quickly, I must say, even though I haven’t really done all that very much.

Friday night was dinner with Jamie at this coffee shop by Lake Merritt in Oakland which serves grits. Had a big glob of them with my chicken-fried steak, while these two creepy fags in matching shirts kept staring at me. A consequence of having been recognized in public a few times because of your website is that you never know if you’re being cruised or just recognized. In this case, I didn’t much care. They both gave me the willies, and it wasn’t just the matching outfits.

Went out Friday night, and everyone I saw gave me a similar case of the willies.

On Saturday, I had Dan and Jamie over for jambalya (frozen), collard greens with cabbage (fresh), jalapeño black-eyed peas (canned), corn bread (mix), and strawberry shortcake (fresh). We watched Roadside Prophets, which is one of my favorite movies no one’s ever seen. Two more people have seen it now, and this is a good thing.

Today, I’m working on a website I don’t much like as a favor to a boss at a part-time job I very much hate. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether I meant that I hate the job, the boss, or both right now. Either way, it’s not a great way to spend an afternoon. Of course, it’s not entirely without compensation. I get a percentage of every video which will never be sold on this site no one will ever visit. And I get to spend my Monday morning at work in relative peace.

Off to cruise the Monster Board again.

Randomly Saturday

So maybe I’m the last person on the web to catch on to The Dreamweaver Depot and the Dreamweaver Supply Bin, but they’re still pretty cool. I like to fantasize about keeping Planet SOMA pretty low-tech, but not all my design clients are necessarily so inclined, and one can ever have too many navigation tools at one’s disposal, after all…

Maybe next week I’ll start having the Planet SOMA logo flying around the page. Maybe not. But I sure do like the idea of making collapsible outline menus, ,especilly when they’re also usable by that significant number of people who (wisely) browse with Javascript disabled.

But enough tech talk. Does anybody else remember this show? I watched it every week as 12-year-old, but all the other kids didn’t know about it even THEN. Probably because they all had actual friends thay played with on Saturday afternoons. I do remember it was little bit silly, but, since puberty was striking at the time, I remember even more clearly that Mike Darnell (who played the older brother) had a really great butt.

It’s Memorial Day weekend, of course. No telling what other best-forgotten memories will surface. I’ve already been digging through the “American Top 40” book. Stay tuned for more…