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Waking up from a particularly nasty nightmare only to find yourself in an Econo Lodge in Nebraska? I don't recommend it.
10:35pm I'll say this much for Kansas: for some reason, my internet access is a lot better. I'm at 26.4kbps, a whole lot better than the 7.0 in Nebraska. Yay. Kinda like the highways in the two states; Nebraska's are bumpy as hell, but Kansas is quite smooth. The change becomes noticeable the moment you cross the state line. Increasing my X-Files-y feeling is the little motel we're staying in now. It's quite like the places Mulder and Scully used to stay in the early seasons. And, when you come down to it, I'm at least as overdressed as they usually were. Next time someone stares, I'm going to flash my driver's license and say, "FBI business. Move along." Or not. Madeline's mother practically squealed when she saw the $2 bag of circus peanuts. Mind you, she insisted on calling them orange slices, which Maddy says are different. Her mother insisted that they're the same. (Seeing as how that sort of thing is about 99% sugar I get nauseous just thinking about it, I have no opinion on the matter. I did, however, point her towards the repulsive recipe on the back. Predictably, she wants to make it.) I suspect that had Maddy been a bit younger, she would have gotten a slap for insolence. Since Maddy's older now, her mother isn't able to use such blatant forms of control and domination—not as much, anyway. But she still finds ways; the fact that she's joining us at the storage shed so we can go through Maddy's stuff and prepare it for mailing back home is evidence, since we have no need for her to be there, and both of us would be much much much happier if she wasn't. But we can't get her not to come. As annoying as it is, I can forgive her the clinginess. It's suffocating and makes me want to die, but it's at least excusable. Utterly inexcusable, however... It was around 5pm. We'd already been at Maddy's parents' house for a few excruciating hours, mostly spent listening to Maddy's mother complain about how terribly unfair Maddy's sister Ritt and brother-in-law B.D. have been, putting restrictions on how much she can smother Her First Grandson with cloying attention (she already had a box full of baby stuff ready to go before the child was conceived, and it's gotten worse), forbidding her from carrying him because of her self-publicized difficulties in walking and carrying things at the time, et cetera. She cued up the waterworks at precisely the right moments, moaning about how long she's fought for this grandchild, not sure how much longer she's going to live what with having beaten back a cancer which could return to claim her life tomorrow. The cancer in question went into remission in 1983 and she was declared officially cured of it ten years later, but she still gets a hell of a lot of mileage out of it. I've seldom encountered someone so brazen in their emotional manipulation. Anyway, Maddy hadn't eaten since before noon. Her ~300 lb. mother, not wanting to miss an opportunity to share with other people (especially her family) the joys of her high-saturated fat/high-lard diet, told her to close her eyes and taste something. The something turned out to be some kind of very rich chocolate-and-cream-cheese item, brought to you by the fine folks at Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Maddy ate about half of it, because she was hungry and because not doing so would have offended her mother, who upon discovering them had polished off a box of (four? six?) in one day. And yet, she still insists that her weight problem is due to her time with cancer in the early eighties. Oh, and that her doctor told her being overweight is healthier than being underweight. Because those are the only choices, don't'cha'know. About an hour later Maddy wasn't feeling so great; her stomach was hurting and she was having bouts of dizziness. It was suggested by Maddy that the cream cheese thing hadn't agreed with her, especially considering it had been on an empty stomach. I agreed that was probably the case, because I know how sensitive her body can get when she hasn't eaten for a while. Her mother was having none of it. She asked a few rather leading questions about how Maddy felt, then announceded that it could be the onset of hypoglycemia. And since that's such a terrible deadly disease which can strike out of nowhere, there was only one thing to do: test Maddy's blood. See if her blood-sugar was off. Because, you know, if she's not careful she could go into a coma. Yeah, I agreed weakly. It would really suck if she went into a coma, since my name wasn't on the car rental agreement. I think I was still in that early stage of my own pattern of dealing with difficult situations, making bad jokes. I then objected bit more vociferously, as did Maddy, but I don't have a voice (I barely have an identity in that house) and Maddy's is always overruled by her mother's. I wanted to take her away right then and there, but of course I didn't. Her mother got out a blood-testing kit which she probably bought on QVC—the woman is seriously proud of her QVC purchases—and said that she'd even use a sterile needle to draw the blood. She tests herself four times a day, you see, but only uses one needle a day. She described this proudly, like it was a display of good ol' fashioned Midwestern horse sense. Howard Hughes is spinning. Maddy is not a generally ill or sickly. Aside from having a bad neck and back, Maddy is as healthy as the proverbial ox—at least compared to her mother, with whom it's impossible to tell apart the hypochondria, the pity ploys and the genuine physical ailment. It's like she has a mutant strain of Tourette's which results in her compulsively crying wolf. The point is, she had absolutely no business drawing blood from Maddy. None. It was perhaps the most disgusting, invasive thing I've ever seen. I have nothing against the concept of bloodletting, the actual physical pain to Maddy was very brief and only a few drops were taken, but it still felt like a horrible, degrading violation. And her mother was so goddamn flip about it, so cavalier. Her using a sterile needle (or whatever the actual item is called) was treated like a special favor, and when I suggested Neosporin and a bandage, her mother said that Maddy should just suck the blood off her finger and that would be fine. I insisted that he put something on it, and Maddy said the blood didn't sound very good anyway. I knew she wasn't doing well, but that drove home just how bad she was feeling. Eventually she got a bandage for her finger, though it took a while since her mother first showed off all the assorted cute animal Band-Aids she owned. Getting one on Maddy's finger didn't matter to her nearly as much as making sure it was the right design. I was livid, but I didn't show it. Y'see, I know that her finger would have been fine without the bandage. Surely it was already clotted, and any infection would be minimal and barely noticeable. That was not the point. I had to do something. Maddy had to know that someone was actually concerned for her, because her mother clearly was not. Mothers who care about their children don't pull shit like that without a damn good reason, her mother had none—excepting that her children have never been anything more to her than manifestations of her sense of failure in life, and taking it out on them is the only way she can work out her issues. She can't hit Maddy anymore, but like I said, there are other ways. If this seems like an extreme accusation, all I can say is, she's probably not entirely aware of it herself, but damn, to me it's like a neon sign on her forehead. And if I'm wrong, the truth is probably worse. Oh, Maddy's blood-sugar turned out to be just fine. In an act of persuasion no doubt intended to be similar to the parent eating a bit of the baby's food as a show of solidarity, Maddy's mother drew some of her own blood and also took the test. Of course, since she was so worried about her daughter going into a coma she tested herself after Maddy, and yet it was still meant as a "See? It doesn't hurt much." Her own blood-sugar, not surprisingly, was at a more dangerous level. (I'd love to know what it was the day she ate the box of the cream cheese things.) After getting bandaged, Maddy said she needed to lie down. Her mother said that she could lie down on her bed, but much to my surprise there were no objections when I suggested us going back to the motel. Maddy was in no condition to drive, but I was more than happy to. Suddenly not being on the rental agreeement (and, ergo, the insurance) didn't matter. We had to get out of there, and we did. I'm still shocked that her mother didn't put up a fight. I suspect it's the only break I'm going to get in this battle of wills between her and I. We were expected at her grandparents' place—I'd actually met them earlier in the day, nice folks who have always been more openly tolerant of our relationship than her immediate family—so after she started feeling better we headed over. Turns out that her mother had been telling anybody who would listen (her key demographic) about having tested Maddy's blood. Maddy's sister and brother-in-law agreed that it was waaaaay out of line, and also apologized for us having to get an earful from her mother about the Grandson issues, And How Unfair Ritt And B.D. Are Being To Her (*sniff*). We'd stopped at Sonic on the way over to get food, and made the tactical error of settling in an unoccupied room to eat, because soon enough her mother came waddling in and started yapping. I didn't make quite as much of an attempt to appear interested as I had earlier in the day; besides the fact that I was still very angry about what she'd done to Maddy, I don't have the acting ability to pretend to care about her plans to reduce her yarn supply. I'm a good listener, an experienced bullshitter and have always harbored a secret desire to act, but this was beyond me. Plus she didn't deserve it. I've heard a lot about her tendency to edit the past, omit things and blatantly lie in order to make herself sound better and otherwise shape reality to her liking, but this was the first time I've ever witnessed the cycle. At one point she was talking about how Maddy had been feeling earlier, how it was surely the fact that she'd eaten that rich thing on an empty stomach. Didn't say a word about how she'd brushed off the idea at the time and diagnosed her as hypoglycemic. Nope. Not worth mentioning, 'cuz none of that happened. She'd bragged to other people about it earlier, but that was then. Now is whatever she says it is. Then I had a moment in which I could have ended it all. We were trying to convince her that she didn't have to come with the shed to us tomorrow, that the two of us can do the work ourselves. (She'd offered to label boxes. This is her level of desperation.) Finally, she said, "Unless you're saying you don't want me to come along." The tone of her voice and the way her eyes narrowed made my blood run cold. If I'd told the truth, the damage would be severe. I'm not quite so concerned about my reputation in her family—I'm a freak no matter what, if a tolerated freak, even by her father—but Maddy would never live it down. And yet I couldn't bring myself to lie. I couldn't say anything; I didn't have the courage. Maddy took up the slack, repeating our already somewhat tired line about insufficient room in the shed, already having all the hands we need, etc. Then, in a rare moment of honesty, Maddy's mother looked right at me and said that she had nothing to do at home and wanted to visit with us (thepainthepainmakeitstopmakeitstop), was I going to deny her that? No. No, of course not. I've met most everyone now, including her father. The reactions and attitudes range from being friendly to ignoring me altogether, so I can't complain. As her grandfather put it upon learning that his my last name is variation on his mother's maiden name (spelled Conely), "He's a Connelly, so he can't be all bad!" In a noble attempt to correct him but keep it in context, Maddy replied "She can't be all bad because she's with me!" It was sweet of her, but I'm fully expecting pronoun violations on this trip. I could fight that battle, or I could take the direct route and start pummeling myself on the head with a hammer. Same net effect. Ritt did accidentally use the male pronoun on Saturday, but she also caught herself right away and apologized profusely. She was sincere, and I appreciated that. Two more days in Kansas, then we drive to Omaha on Thursday and fly home on Friday. It's seeming farther and farther away. There's an increasing chance of thunderstorms over the next couple days, and we're keeping our fingers crossed. Sometimes the only antidote to extreme human ugliness is extreme natural beauty. I'm on vacation, y'know.
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Although I have witnessed things on this assignment which seem to defy rational explanation, I cannot accept Agent Mulder's position that some things are beyond the scope of known science. My training prevents me from... *cough* Sorry about that. I was flashing back to those first-season X-Files episodes when Scully would be writing about the case in a motel room on her laptop. We've spent most of our time out here with Maddy's sister and brother-in-law, and I have to admit, it's gone much, much better than I was expecting. Her sister even told her confidentially that he thinks I'm "cool." (Oh, those nutty kids and their hipster lingo!) Considering that they're also going to Clay Center tomorrow and will be there for the rest of the week as well, it's good that there's been some level of, for want of a better word, bonding. We're going to need it. Even if it meant that I had to watch Jackass tonight. I've done a good job of avoiding that show and had hoped my luck wouldn't run out, but alas. He likes it, and it's his house. Wasn't much I could do. Indeed, I have a bad feeling that I may end up watching a lot more teevee than I would otherwise this week, 'cuz what the hell else is there to do in rural Kansas? I have plenty of reading material and the means to play Asteroids Deluxe or otherwise geek out whenever I feel like it, especially when Survivor is coming on, but that can also be considered rude. Oh well. It won't kill me, I suppose. We ate this afternoon at a big buffet place apparently frequented by all manner of hefty churchies. The stare factor was high, but I'm honestly not sure if that was because I'm continuing to insist on wearing my long black leather jacket when most everyone else is in shorts, or because Maddy has blue bangs and piercings. Or maybe it's the eyeliner. Who knows? I find that I'm getting so used to it that it doesn't really matter anymore. We even went into a mall and a K-Mart, two things I try to avoid doing under normal circumstances, let alone on a Sunday in Nebraska. Looks were given. Fine. So be it. While we were there it really struck me that I won't have any real opportunity to exercise this week. Even so much as walking around Clay Center is fraught with peril—if I stand out in Omaha, then in Clay Center people will call the sheriff. I guess I've gotten to the point where, for as much of a struggle as it can be to get myself to actually go sometimes, I take a degree of comfort from the fact that I go. I suspect I'll be making my return a week from tomorrow. Whilst in K-Mart I wanted to buy a pink flamingo, but they didn't have any. Bummer. I'll probably have better luck in the Bay Area, ironically enough. Maddy did get her mother a peace offering: circus peanuts, which her mother apparently likes. Somehow, I think that says it all.
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I think the trick to getting up early is not sleeping much to begin with. Maddy and I got to bed at 10pm with our alarms set for 3am, but by 2 we'd slept as much as we were going to, if we really did at all. Mind you, we stayed in bed for good measure. We didn't have to get up until 3. No point in rushing the inevitable. The Supershuttle arrived right on schedule, and got us to the airport in plenty of time. Aside from driving as though he wanted to be a Muni driver when he grew up, I gotta hand it to the guy—he's brave. Not so much for picking up passengers in some fairly crime-ridden areas (in this case, the neighorhood just east of Ocean Avenue), but the fact that he uses a high-power maglite to see the addresses from the street. I can certainly see how that could be misinterpreted. Anyway, so far everything's gone smoothly. Deceptively so, almost. We're currently flying between Salt Lake City and Omaha (I'm not sure exactly where, but there's lots of clouds and mountains and stuff), and will probably be there in an hour so. Then we get the rental car, head to the motel, do whatever it takes to look like we aren't operating on barely four hours sleep, and...well, you know. And. While waiting in the Salt Lake City airport for our connecting flight, a flight to Fresno started to board. For a moment, it was quite tempting. Go to Fresno, hang out with my mom, have her make some of those killer pancakes, take the train back to San Francisco...but, of course, no. Still, though, Fresno sounds good. Consider. Having two chapters left and not wanting to wait a week to see how it ended, I brought along Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and finished it on the last flight. It'll probably spend the rest of the trip at the bottom of our suitcase. Juuuuuust in case. Dana and Costanza came by last night for a crash course in kitty maintenance. Mina hid in the closet as is her wont, but Oscar was all about the idea of new hands to pet him. I think he and Dana are going to get along just fine. Makes me wish I had the webcam set up at home, though. Howard's wife Melissa goes on business trips a lot, and while she's gone he takes pictures of their dogs and sends them to her. I might just have to break down and ask Dana if she could bring along her digital camera one of these days... Speaking of photography, if circumstances permit, I'm hoping to engage in a bit of cultural anthropology and get some shots of the brother-in-law's beer fridge and Packer-branded home. So in the future I can convince myself it really existed.
2:02pm (central time, finally) We were bushwhacked. Bamboozled. Hoodwinked, I say. We'd just gotten off the plane in Omaha when an extremely obvious thought occurred to me: what if they decide to meet us at the airport? It wasn't in the original plan, but who hasn't engaged in an airport ambush before? Even if they haven't before, there's a first time for everything, 'cuz Maddy spotted her sister up through the window of the terminal. It was kinda like in movies when somebody suddenly says "It's a trap!" right before the enemy leaps out of the bushes. So they got to see me as is, unshowered and unshaven. First impressions, you know. Thirty-two meters per second, right?
11:34pm First hurdle completed: unless he was putting on a total act, the brother-in-law seems to accept me. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I seem fairly perceptive about their problems with Maddy's mother (the woman's insecurities and neuroses are so intense and destructive as to be pathological, she will never admit to having been or done wrong, is openly emotionally manipulative and is happy to lie whenever it'll strengthen her position), I'm a MSTie, and I was able to identify Ministry's "N.W.O." after the first three seconds. Any goff worth their salt oughta be able to do that—it would be like not knowing "How Soon Is Now?"—but it came in handy in this case because it allowed us to determine that a mystery CD he's had for a while now is in fact Psalm 69. That, I think, was an act of colossal thorn removal. The second hurdle, to be faced the day after tomorrow, is her father. The one who made a point of avoiding me when I was here before. The same charge can be applied to her sister, but she at least had the excuse of the long drive. A lame excuse, but one I'll grant her. On the other hand, I spent the better part (well, a long part) of a day in this man's house, and I happened to be dating his oldest daughter, but he couldn't be bothered. Or, more accurately, he didn't dare. I haven't yet had Omaha sushi, but I did try Omaha chicken teriyaki. It was on yellow rice. Now I know. Apparently, wearing a long leather jacket in Nebraska in late April makes one noticeable. I've been informed by at least one kind stranger that I won't be needing it. Probably true, but I'm also finding my Fresno attitudes about heat surfacing. 85? These people think that's hot? Hell, where I grew up, we considered 85 degree days to be a relief. Besides, fashion is a cruel and demanding bitch-goddess. In the negative column, my internet access via the laptop is spotty at best. From home I was able to dial in and get a smokin' 28.6kbps, but some reason here amongst the shit-brown plains of Nebraska if I'm able to connect at all I get 7.2kbps for about three minutes before I'm disconnected. No KFJC for me on this trip, and of course it'll make posting updates even dodgier than I was expecting. I'll probably be lucky to manage one successful upload a day. (A horrendous bad joke about constipation came to mind, but I don't think I'll pursue it.) I carried a small, well-wrapped quantity of grass in my boot today. A small enough amount that if we were to get arrested, the charge would be at most possession, definitely not intent to sell. But I've yet to encounter drug-sniffing dogs in the terminals, nor have I ever been asked to remove my shoes for inspection, so I'm not too worried. (Ironically, Maddy was pegged for a random bag search at SFO's x-ray machines this morning.) Burnout tells me that he's too paranoid to fly while carrying; this coming from a man whom I've seen casually roll a joint in any number of public places, something which has always made me nervous. Go figure. Even More Irony Dept.: this is a non-smoking room. Six more days. Very long days, I suspect.
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My willful ignorance of sports results in me not knowing the exact term, but I think it's "under the wire" or something like that. I refer to the timing involved in my new velvets from Rae arriving. A day later, and I wouldn't have had them for the trip. The weird thing is, in spite of being made from the same measurements as my current, rapidly deconstructing pair, they feel bigger and looser. I suppose it's possible my body's changed that much in the meantime, and if so, it's a good thing. This is not me complaining. (How's that for a change of pace?) Were I to complain about something, it would more likely be the fact that my discman has chosen this moment in time to die. Couldn't have waited until after the trip, heavens no. How much irony would there have been in that? None, that's how much. Made going to the gym this morning a less pleasant experience than usual; thankfully, they didn't turn on the stero (one of the speakers of which happens to be directly above my favorite crosstrainer, don't'cha know) until I was just about ready to leave. I'll have to get a new one when we get back, I suppose. For the trip I'll just use Maddy's and/or the laptop, which I thoughtfully loaded up with my kind of comfort music—Manson, eels, Lisa Germano, Spiritualized, an incomplete advance of the new R.E.M. album, and even some Coil (Black Light District) and Negativland (JamCon '84) in case I happen to get in one of those kinds of moods. Never can tell. And if the wheezy little internal modem can handle a 20kbps mp3 stream, there's KFJC's live feed. I first heard about the station from Ump last week at Dylan's party; he referred to a Foothill College radio station which frequently played nothing but noise, and naturally my curiosity was piqued in a big way. Fortunately he actually remembered their call letters and I was able to find their site—and, happily, the aforementioned live feed, since they're based in the Los Altos Hills and their signal doesn't reach the City. In a twist which is indicative of the utterly random nature of existence, my computer at work couldn't handle the mp3 feed but my computer at home can. The one that can't handle realaudio or .mov files or pretty much any kind of multimedia without choking. Go figure, and again, I ain't complaining. So last night, after Maddy had gone to bed, I listened to Radio Free Hatred while lying on the couch in the blacklight-lit living room (hooray for long headphone cords). At midnight I switched over to the radio and listened to the live broadcast of Over The Edge, eventually falling asleep to it. It was sublime, and the next best thing to good acid trip. Whatever it takes...
2:44pm Oh, and I cut myself shaving this morning. Don't it just figure, though? Same place as always, just above the right corner of my mouth. I've noticed that if I don't cut myself there, the hairs are always just a little bit longer than the rest. Its as though I'm being given a choice: visible hair, or a visible shaving wound. Have I mentioned that I didn't time my last electro session very well? On the plus side, it has about 24 hours to heal, and if it isn't completely gone by then, I can at least cover it with makeup. That's the plan, anyhow; unless I chicken out between now and then, I plan to be in full battle gear when meeting Maddy's sister and brother-in-law tomorrow afternoon. First impressions, you know.
8:41pm The really annoying part? It's very foggy outside, something which doesn't happen nearly as often as the city's (or the Outer Sunset's) reputation would suggest. It's fucking beautiful, is what it is. And we're leaving it. No doubt by the time we return, it'll be all sunny again. Ick. Depending on when we get back, of course. According to the current schedule, it'll be Friday afternoon. If things get intolerable (which is to say, if Maddy's family simply can't accept her—ironically enough, we're more worried about how they'll react to her appearance than anything else), we'll cut out early and head to Vegas. We even have a safeword: "Saucer Section," the absurdly good quesadillas served at Quark's in the Hilton. Hopefully it won't come to that, of course, and the most logical course of action if things get bad would be to just come back home and hide with the kitties, but we're trying to consider all the possibilities. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who has been wishing us luck. It's appreciated.
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"on developerkit: only MPU came up for LB, SS for Sun, Worldcomm, IBM ??" A typically abbreviated-to-the-point-of-negation message from The Den Mother this morning. I'm working on the project in question, and I know what every word and acronym means, but it still made no sense to me. Kinda like when Lisa Simpson saw the words "Yahoo Serious Film Festival."
12:38pm This is my laptop. There are many like it but this one is mine. That's not quite true. I'm sure there are many like it—a Thinkpad 570—but it isn't mine. It belongs to the company, and that's okay. I like it, and it'll certainly do the job on the trip, but I'm still quite glad I decided not to buy the one from the janitor a couple months back. I feel no regret about it, whereas I'm sure I would have had I bought it. To me, buyer's remorse is like a hangover. Neither are worth the trouble.
5:06pm Although we don't leave until Saturday (the flight's at quarter past six in the morning, but Saturday nonetheless), I'm taking tomorrow off. I have enough vacation time stored up, and I guess my theory was that it would help me ease into the upcoming week. I don't know. In any event, it appears I made the right decision, since tomorrow happens to be Bring Your Kid To Work Day. Can't think of a better day to be someplace else. Maddy's still working, but she'll get to escape at 2pm...hopefully she won't be too scarred.
10:39pm Earlier this week I had a flash of foresight which, by my myopic standards, was so damn brilliant I can only conclude that I'd passed through the ghost of a really smart person. I realized I ought to make sure my hormone supply would last through the trip, as running out while in Kansas would suck mightily. It wouldn't be fatal, nor would it even have any immediate physical effects, but somehow I suspect it would make what I'm already anticipating to be a severe sense of isolation and disconnection all the worse. I checked my supply, did the math (ran out of fingers, but as luckily I have almost as many toes) and discovered that they would in fact run out halfway through next week. So I called in a refill, which I picked up tonight. For better or worse, the pharmacy is Longs Drugs in Serramonte Mall in Daly City. A quick check on Yahoo reveals that there are at least 40 Walgreens locations which are closer and could do the job just as well, but I keep using the same comparatively out-of-the-way place. If nothing else, they already know me there, and that's not a boat which requires rocking. To continue the metaphor, I'm still surprised I didn't capsize and drown when my insurance changed last year. Just a little water in the lungs, nothing a little heaving couldn't take care of. I picked up the prescription tonight, and I was leaving the mall I tried to convince myself that I wasn't being looked at as much as I felt like I was. You're just being paranoid. Besides, if you can see them looking at you then it follows that they can see you looking at them, right? Hell, they probably think you're the one with the staring problem. It didn't help when I passed a guy sitting on a bench facing away from the exit. He was apparently so fascinated by me that he actually shifted his position on the bench so he could watch me leave. Granted, I only know this because I kept looking back over my shoulder and saw him staring at me. Naaaaaaaah. Musta been something else.
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No gym last night. Instead, I gave in to the sushi craving which has gone unfulfilled for assorted reasons the last few weeks. We went to what seems to be our favorite place, a wall-hole in Pacifica which has absolutely no frills and makes up for it by undercharging on their food. 16 California Rolls for $4, that kinda thing. It's not the kind of place I'd want to bring someone who'd never had sushi before, but once you know what you're doing, it's perfect. And, of course, the price can't be beat. We're actually still planning on getting sushi in Omaha, since it seems as fascinating a concept as a burrito from a truck stop in Topeka (been there, done that). When in Rome, after all. Unfortunately, there was a bit of drama unfolding at the next table. A couple was having something resembling an argument, though it was mostly the guy listing everything that was wrong with the girl. For the most part she was just sitting there, taking it, although when she tried to argue any points he would just get angrier. The really sad part was, I got the feeling that this wasn't an isolated incident, but rather an average night for them. Their relationship was probably based on his control over her, and he needed to make sure she never forgot that he was in charge. It was quite disturbing, especially for Maddy, who's been on the receiving end of that sort of thing before. Annoying on another level was the teevee in the opposite direction, showing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. I was able to ignore it for the most part, but whenever I do find myself watching that show (and it's almost always as a captive audience), I want to scream, "Just answer the fucking question! You know it! I know it! Dogs knows it! Stop dragging it out!" Then again, it's the most profitable teevee show ever, so I guess somebody knows what they're doing. It was damn good sushi, though.
10:13am I do realize, by the way, that without knowing the City's actual budget, the figure of $1.75 million is meaningless. $1.75 million out of what? Out of $10 million? $100 million? One billion? I'm exaggerating, but you get the point. Unfortunately, that's as much information as the article gave. I'm reminded of when Conk once went on a tirade about AIDS research. This was in the early nineties, shortly after he found Dawg and Widdle Baybee Jeezus. And you thought "compassionate conservatism" started with King George II? Anyway, not only was he opposed to AIDS research on moral grounds (being a gay disease and all), he was very upset that more money was going into that than into cancer research. I suggested that maybe it was because AIDS research was much a much newer field, and that since we already knew more about cancer, perhaps not as much money was needed for basic cancer research. Although he had no evidence to suggest I wrong, he shrugged it off. Of course. If I'd been a little more politically savvy and/or braver at the time, I could have accused him of just trying to "throw money at the problem" of cancer. As I recall, that's always been a beeg conservative no-no, unless it's the drug war. When I graduated from college in '97 my father insisted on having a party for me, and it was one of the few times Barefoot and Conk had ever been in the same room. Somehow, they got in a discussion about school funding. Conk was against it, of course, not wanting his hard-earned tax dollars going towards other people's education. (He'd had similar issues with me a few years earlier, because for a while I was on unemployment and receiving financial aid for college, and he was convinced the money was coming out of his pocket. Of course, the unemployment had been coming from the last five years of paychecks and as of this writing I'm not even close to paying back those student loans, but he was still in that babybat stage of arch-conservatism wherein facts can't dissuade their deep-rooted sense of outrage.) (Yes, I'll admit the same is true of liberals.) He spouted some figures about how much money goes to the schools, clearly angry about it. I don't remember how much, and since it doesn't matter, I'll say it was x. x! Can you believe it? The liberals want x of our tax dollars to be wasted on schools! Barefoot asked him how much the schools would be getting otherwise, the overall size of the budget from which x came, actual cost per taxpayer, where the money would be going otherwise, that sort of thing. Conk admitted he didn't know the answers to those questions, but that it didn't matter. x! How can that not make you angry? Anyway, the cost argument (among other things) is being used today by one clever columnist, who suggests that opposition is not based on prejudice against the transgendered so much as "against government giving extravagant health care benefits to city workers at their expense." He refers to it as "a healthy chunk of change," but at no point actually gives the numbers. He does bring up the "if you offer it they will come" specter, imagining the city's payrolls overflowing with trannies looking for a free lunch. I'm sure that's a notion which scares a lot of good decent normal people, sorta like the early civil rights movements did. My favorite line, which concludes the column:
Get it? Yeah, I may not like my born gender, but what about him? He doesn't like his face! Now that's funny. Really puts it all in perspective. Heck, I'll bet he was inspired by that equally thoughtful city hall Supervisor. On Monday one of the editors weighed in, inexplicably ignoring the can't-miss wealth of humorous possibilities inherent in the subject (remember, anything involving men pretending to be women is funny) and instead is sensititve to the individuals actually affected:
Silly editor. Don't they know those people deserve to be marginalized because they chose to be misfits? That, as the conventional wisdom goes, if they're going to live an alternative lifestyle they have to face the consequences? It's like both my mother and Maddy's have said to each of us in the both distant and recent past—if you don't like people staring, why do you look like that? (Maddy isn't a tranny, but she has blue hair and piercings, so it's close enough.) Pain and isolation, indeed. Just because they don't like how they look, everyone else has to pick up the tab? Please. While I'm morbidly curious about the ripples this issue is sending out, I'm not actually as up in arms about it as I may seem. It'll be included in the benefits package, or it won't. If it does it won't affect me directly because I don't work for the city, and if I ever do work for the city it'll be because I've lost this job and can't get another in this industry. I won't have been drawn there specifically for the benefits like the naysayers have been suggesting might happen. If it doesn't, I'm not likely to be out in the street protesting. Maybe I'm just so jaded I can't see straight, or maybe I know that this kind of social change (that is, the acceptance of trannies as something other than freaks) is always slow, and it probably won't happen in my lifetime. It's times like this, though, when Magneto's plan in the X-Men movie makes sense to me. Let's see how you like it.
4:35pm I'm no more of a fan of spam than anyone else, but seeing the subject line "Tired of being hassled by creditors?" always makes me laugh. Nice to know the spammers are utterly lacking in irony.
6:02pm Then again, maybe I could get a job working for the city after all; certainly I could do a better job with their Stop Red Light Running! page. Oh, don't get me wrong, I find its aggressively 800x600 design rather charming. And it features that rarest of creatures, the non-gratuitous animated gif. (Pay no attention to the floating gif at the lower right corner of your screen, IE users. I mostly use Opera, so I almost never see it. My, how ironic.) I mean, given the context a traffic light makes sense. The URL is up on signs along my office's stretch of Battery, and I'd imagine all over the city. The idea, of course, is to encourage people not to run red lights. Didn't stop the driver from doing it this morning, of course—any more than red lights stop pedestrians from crossing. Across the board, the rule seems to be, so long as I don't hit anyone/get hit, it's cool. The callous disregard for safety and/or the lives of themselves and others is something I try not to think about too much. It's just how people are. I can try my best not to be the same way. That's the absolute most I can do. I have noticed that both the drivers and pedestrians are almost always either drinking coffee or talking on a celphone. Probably just coincidence.
7:15pm I agree with Jello Biafra: a good reason to be a registered voter is to vote against sports stadiums. Believe me, I tried. I voted against Pac Bell Park, and the fucking monstrosity went up anyway. But I gave it a shot, and as a result, I'd like to think it's not my fault that I won't be able to take the freeway home tonight because of the traffic congestion that damn ballpark is causing...
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So a few month back it was announced that San Francisco would include up to $50,000 in transition-related expenses in the health benefits of its employees. Okay, so they didn't call it "transition-related" but rather "sex change," not a phrase I care for at all. (I dislike it almost as much as the "trapped" cliche.) Anyway, if approved by Da Mayor and the Board of Supervisors, San Francisco would be the first city to include such an option for its workers. Not being employed by the city it doesn't affect me directly, but naturally I thought it sounded like a good idea, like maybe we were being taken seriously. Ha! Can't be that easy, not even in this city. At least one supervisor has announced that he will vote against it. Which, if he's truly speaking for his consituents as he claims to be, is fine; that's his job. It's the logic that pisses me off. Just like when the straight world was faced with the proposition of not being allowed to discriminate against homosexuals, the argument is being made that the alleged sufferers of so-called "gender dysphoria" will be getting special benefits, and that it'll open the floodgates for other weirdos to come foward:
"Perhaps they want to change the color of their skin?" What the fuck? Is that the best they can do, making stuff up? (We'll ignore the obvious Michael Jackson jokes.) Trannies are merely dissatisfied with our appearance. Is that part of it? Yes. Is that all of it? No, not by a long shot. Can anyone not experiencing it really understand that? As near as I can tell, no. So should we be taken seriously? Of course not. It's insulting as hell to be marginalized and denigrated but it's nothing new, either. That's the way the world sees us, even in places like The City. To be honest, though, I'm concerned about giving special benefits to men who are sexually attracted to other men. What about those men who are attracted to children, or animals? I mean, it's the same thing, right? A few fun facts: if 35 people take advantage of the program in its first year, it would cost the city $1.75 million. There are currently a dozen identified transsexuals working for the city out of 35,000 employees. The cost to each employee if this benefit is included would be roughly $1.70 a month. I don't know how much a latte at Starbucks costs, but I'm going to guess it's more than that. Employees applying for the benefits would have to be working for the city for over a year, and has to have doctor's approval—just like to get mones, surgery, etc. Oh, and one of the other proposed benefits, one which doesn't seem to have faced any opposition? Viagra. I'll say it again, in all caps and italicized: VIAGRA. Because, y'know, it's very important that men are able to get stiffies. I wonder if the sudden controversey about transgender benefits is to divert attention. If enough people are upset about those confused freaks getting "special benefits" (never you mind how much medical literature there is about gender dysphoria being a very real and debilitating condition, they're just fucking perverts) then nobody will notice Pfizer's cash cow getting fatter and fatter...
3:47pm Why, yes, there is a Howland Island.
6:13pm Oh, good. Another she's really a man!!! controversy, this time involving Elodie Gossuin, the current Miss France and potential Miss Universe. If you want to see a low-quality picture of her and/or can read French, look here. But please don't insist that you can "tell it's really a guy just by looking," because you'd be lying. Besides, it hasn't been determined that she is in fact a tranny. At this point, it probably doesn't matter; I suspect the suspicion alone will derail her career. (Does a Miss France actually have a career to be derailed, any more than Miss America does? Discuss amongst yourselves.) And whether or not she's a tranny, I feel sorry for her; nobody deserves this kind of attention, nor the accompanying scorn. It's like being accused of pedophilia. It don't matter what the truth is, 'cuz nobody will ever look at you quite the same again. I'll admit, I've got a bad feeling that this thing is going to really hit the national (or at least Midwestern) consciousness in, say, about four or five days. Just in time. I can just hear Maddy's brother in law: "So, 'Sherilyn,' I hope you weren't planning on entering any pageants anytime soon." Because, y'know, he'll just be kidding around. All in good fun. And where's the harm in that? Us swanky California types don't have a sense of humor?
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We're leaving on Saturday morning, so the countdown now begins for real. Or the conveyor belt and rotating knives start moving, depending on your point of view.
12:03pm Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doooooooom... Sorry. It's kinda addictive.
2:48pm Between the bevy of nummy snacks at Dylan's party on Saturday and Maddy's irresistible yet deadly (much like herself) suggestion of chinese food on Sunday night, I didn't exactly behave myself calorically this weekend. I did make it to the gym on Sunday morning, and had also gone the previous Thursday night to make up for Wednesday, so I'm keeping my schedule. Sorta. Although I still cinched a bit, I was just happy enough with my shape on Saturday evening to be inspired to keep on with the exercise thing. I don't know, maybe I haven't really slimmed down, but I think I have, so I'm going with it. As I knew I would, I wish I'd gotten started for real, sooner—as in, much sooner than the upcoming trip. Alas. At least there's a longer-range goal. Maddy and I recently confessed to one another that we'd both been thinking about something Orky said to us: "You guys really oughta come to Burning Man with me this year." He's been going for a number of years years, and I'd be lying if I said I've never been curious. Granted, part of me recoils at the thought on the most basic level—the whole being in the desert thing—but it's also something I've never done, and it helps that we'd be with someone who knows how it works, as opposed to just being more clueless tourists. Anyway, since I won't have the long jacket in which to hide (being that it's the middle of the fucking desert and all), that's as good a reason as any to work on the waistline. It isn't vanity when you can justify it, right?
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For the record, Over the Edge doesn't close with "All Through the Night," at least not the edition I listened to in RealAudio on Friday. Of course, it wasn't typical, being five hours rather than three to make up for the host of the program which usually comes on afterwards (at 3am) not showing up. So maybe that's why. I'll listen to their most recent show tomorrow and find out. Party at Dylan's last night. Went well, all things considered. First time I've been in full battle gear around some of my friends (including Dana and Costanza) in quite some time. Been too long, really. It did get me to thinking, though, about possible gatherings while we're in Kansas. Maddy's expecting that her family will probably all be getting together at least once while we're there. (And, unlike when the possibility of me accompanying Maddy back there for her grandparents' anniversary last year was discussed—a trip which didn't happen—her mother won't expect me to wait in the motel during the festivities.) Although I'll be in my usual semi-stealthy uniform of buetz, velvets and t-shirt (mit long-sleeved fishnet shirt underneath) for most of the trip, in that case I'll probably be extra daring and wear something closer to what they're expecting, i.e. a skirt. What I was wearing last night, in fact, pleated skirt with stripeys and a black blouse. If nothing else, it should help them to wrap their brain around the concept that this big man to whom their midguided little Madeline ran off actually kinda sorta vaguely resembles a girl. He isn't and never will be, of course, but in the interest of familial peace, we can all pretend. You know that Madeline, she gets some crazy ideas. A little while ago I ventured into the bowels of The Good Guys! in search of a new pair of headphones. I got called "ma'am" twice and "sir" once, all by the same employee. Sounds about right.
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I've never known a morning in which the sun didn't rise. Even if I couldn't see it, I knew it had to be there, so I've never had any choice but to uncurl myself and keep moving. If I didn't, I would burn.
9:30am Speaking of getting burnt, Barefoot lost his job yesterday. The dot-com crash takes another victim. No more big dinners at King Yen for a while, I guess.
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