Maddy's been having erotic dreams about The Weasley Twins from the Rowling movie, and this is what my brain serves up. What the fuck? Shaggy British twink twins aren't really my thing, but still. This is what I get for going to bed before eleven.

9:52am

twinkcest (n): sexual relations between identical twin twinks.

4:15pm

I love it. Not only was I the first one in the office this morning at half past eight (an earlier arrival than usual for me, as I was spurred to an earlier awakening by the nightmare), but at a quarter past four the majority of my department has already left for the day, and we're being cut loose tomorrow at noon. We take our holiday party preparations very seriously.

10:12pm

I've doubled my bedclothes and added an extra blanket to my bed. That should keep the anxiety nightmares at bay.

It's a pretty enough tree, which is a good thing considering that it's going to be in my peripheral vision above my monitor for the next few weeks.

11:23am

For me, the problem isn't that Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion, whatever that means. Is an Inquisition part of the plot? Wouldn't know, because what those books really represented for me is everything that's boring about fantasy literature. Like Lord of the Rings, it seemed like everyone in my family but me was into the Narnia books. Offhand, I don't remember the xtian element being discussed; they simply liked the stories. I tried, but my interest was not held. As a result, I have no interest in the movie(s), though I hope Tilda Swinton got a nice big paycheck for having to dress like a girl for a change.

Meanwhile, Sister Edith has loaned me her copy of the latest J.K. Rowling book (the one I'd started on a few months ago belonged to Collette), so it's not like I'm pretending to be completely above this sort of thing. Though I enjoy the books for what they are, I'd be lying if I said the backlash didn't help.

3:08pm

It's a trap!

9:46pm

Every so often, I'm startled by the sight of myself in the mirror, with blonde hair and my bangs grown out. And by the fact that it actually looks pretty good on me. Life is change. Things are different now than they were a year ago, and I suspect they won't be the same a year from now. A year ago today I was about to begin what would turn out to be a very short stint of employment at the construction company, and Maddy and I were gearing up for a New Orleans trip which the word "fateful" doesn't even begin to describe.

Vash and I are going to the Zine Unbound exhibit at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts tomorrow evening. Friday night after the Queer Open Mic is my company's big holiday shindig. Vash is renting a Barbary Coast-era costume, and I'll be helping her put it on earlier in the day. Never can tell where life will take you.

12/3/05pm
10:15pm
Divas. No cover before 11pm. You'd think they'd let that one go for now, since their liquor license has been suspended. Why is it a little unclear; the sign makes a vague reference to an ongoing battle with the liquor board. But over what, exactly? Was it a genuine infraction, or some sort of harassment from The Man? I don't really care enough to ask. And that, my friends, is (in addition to my execrable work habits) why I'll never be Joan Didion.

Not sure what I'm doing here. As usual. When do I ever know? Because I can be, perhaps, some sort of questionable "use it or lose it" ethic. There was a particular Neil Young song which The Ex loved; she once said it summed up our relationship. "And though their love was hangin' on a limb / She taught him how to dance and start again." I'm not sure if it was before or after the breakup that the prophetic nature of the song became apparent. "She knew he had to go / There was something about freedom / He thought he didn't know." I guess I still think I don't know.

11:30pm
Walked down to the Walgreens in the Castro for batteries for the new discman I bought at Circuit City before going to Divas. Well, not really new so much as a replacement, the same make and model as the one which recently disappeared. Yep, that's right, in addition to losing my favorite sweater and scarf and my only prescription sunglasses, I somehow lost my discman. I don't even have a theory on this one.

This driver, however, was not. He continued: "Remember, your greatness is not determined by how many people serve you, but by how many people you serve." Surely, he wouldn't...he couldn't...

"In order to find a friend, you must be a friend. See, you never get a second chance to get a first impression."

Pain. The train stopped and started its way through the tunnel. "Remember, your greatness is not determined by how many people server you, but how many people you serve." Oh, god, please, no. His slow and deep delivery made it worse, giving the impression that he was telling us very important things, doing us a huge life favor by imparting profound wisdom to go with his basso profundo voice. Pain, and torture.

See, public transportation in general and a slow morning commute in particular is an experience of quiet desperation. People are not happy. They want to be somewhere else. Not necessarily their job, but even their crappy job is better than sitting on an unmoving train or (worse) bus. And then to be talked down to, a captive audience to this platitudinous glurge, is like stripping away the last few layers of dignity.

"Stock tip for the day: S-M-I-L-E is the only stock which increases your face value."

I tried putting on just my earbud headphones (which did not disappear with the discman), but it didn't make a difference. If only I had some...yes! I do! Actual earplugs! Somewhere in my bag...

Holdovers from the Dark Advice Tour, in fact. The bartender at Jake's in Olympia gave them to me as protection against what I was expecting to be extreme rowdiness from our neighbors at the hotel, but I wound up not needing them. Damn, but I had fun in Olympia. The gig was great because I got to totally do my own thing rather than just read from the book (some writers like to read long because they think it makes them look better, y'know), and I even found the courage to ask a cute girl to dance. While dancing, she commented that her first concert had been Depeche Mode, thus answering my unasked question about what the music was. She lasted a couple songs before thanking me and returning to her friends at the pool table; I'd observed enough beforehand to determine she wasn't actually on a date with anyone. Later, I was standing outside Jake's talking to Maddy on my cell when the girl left. She kissed the back of my (other) hand and thanked me. I returned the gesture, all while keeping the phone to my ear. Yep, I've become one of those people. And speaking of those people, while I was out there talking to Maddy (who was all kinds of excited about the fact that I was in the legendary-to-Hole-fans Olympia), a couple of boys wearing jock attire walked by. One of them loudly observed, "That's a MAN!" What's a buzz for if not to be killed?

The next morning, while Jennifer was still asleep, Alvin and I walked around Olympia. Our primary mission was to find Alvin his morning coffee, and to get it from the right kind of place. We spotted a couple of babydykes walking down the street, and Alvin asked them where we could find the best coffee, starting with "We're from San Francisco..." Turns out they were from Santa Cruz—I get the impression that this sort of traveler convergence is not uncommon—and told us to follow them to Batdorf & Bronson, which is evidently the big hipster coffee joint in town. So hip, in fact, that some people are upset that they recently moved across the street into a bigger location. After I had a mocha (what I always order when I feel compelled to order something coffee-esque, a legacy from The Ex) and Alvin had whatever he had, we walked around downtown for a couple hours. Returning to the motel, Jennifer was just starting to come alive. After she was cognizant and clothed, we headed back into metropolitan Olympia, in search of a thrift store we'd been told about the night before by the name of Dumpster Values.

It wasn't open when we arrived, so we went into the bagel shop next door. Standing in line behind me was a girl who reminded me a great deal of Diva Zappa (on whom I've always had a crush), down to the colorful knit cap. I complimented her on the cap, and she returned the favor about my cowboy hat. We chatted, and she accepted an invitation to sit at the table with us. It's not an offer I would have made to anyone else during the trip, but something about Olympia lead itself to that sort of thing. An Evergreen student, she told us about the local youth and homeless cultures, which seemed to intersect with one another a great deal. It slowly dawned on me that she was a tranny. A few things she said here and there, some rather obscure and some as explicit as actually saying "transitioning," even though it was mentioned with no particular import, just something that she did. "Yeah, I graduated from high school, transitioned, and got a job at a movie theater..." It's how I try to be, though I'm not sure how successful I am.

Presently, I was not in my happy Olympia place playing traveling rockstar but instead on the N line playing desperate commuter, digging out the earplugs. The one downside was that they'd been used by the bartender, but her ear cooties seemed the least of my troubles. In they went. That familiar sensation, as they de-squish themselves, filling the canal, creating a foamy orange barrier—

"We all have our time outs. But remember, your two hands can never keep up with the clock's two hands."

MY EARS! THE PLUGS, THEY DO NOTHING!

Was this some new policy, perhaps? The Muni uberlords had already demonstrated a fondness for the disembodied god-voice, employed as they are on most buses. Every so often a pleasant yet authoritarian voice will issue a reminder that eating and drinking and smoking are verboten, or to move to the rear of the bus, that sort of thing. They only do it on buses, not trains, but I've always known it was only a matter of time. Maybe the time was up, and drivers were now instructed to talk to the passengers as much as possible (though safety still requires avoiding unnecessary conversation). As I mentioned above, we're a captive audience, the literal definition of the term. At least I can stand outside the theater when the commercials are playing.

Mark my words: someday, music and advertising will be piped in. The hell of it is, most people are so desensitized to constant media bombardment, they won't give it a second thought. It won't seem as bad as the driver reciting banal proverbs, anyway. Perhaps they'll just be thinking of how much they want to get home to watch commercial teevee. I've gotten a few rides in a friend's SUV, and I've noticed that he'll constantly switch between stations, never able to find a song that he likes. When he lands on a commerical, however, he'll stop surfing. My brain simply cannot wrap itself around that logic.

"Remember, the race is not given to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to he who endures."

Bitter, bitter irony, which he probably thought we'd find comforting or inspiring: I'm late to work, but I'm like the tortoise—a winner! I was so far beyond caring at that point, it wasn't even on the map. Thankfully, we'd emerged onto Embarcadero, and there wasn't much farther to go.

Anyway, yeah. That's why I replaced my CD player.

Just got back from a horrendously painful Bad Movie Night, in the form of the bloated cgi-a-thon Pearl Harbor. Man, that was a bad movie, to the point of belligerence. The movie actively wished me harm. It wanted to follow me to the Black Light District and kick Perdita, then forge a note to Vash saying I don't like her anymore. Pearl Harbor wanted to fuck my shit up. Kate Beckinsale was nice to look at for three hours, admittedly—I'm a sucker for the forties look—but a couple of sips from the Cisco Black Cherry shared between Mikl-Em and Geekboy helped, too.