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Wednesday, 28 February 2001 (heart shaped box) 9:07am Nothing can kill the Grimace. 10:13am Ugh. It's that most evil time of the work year, reviews. More specifically, evaluations, of one's self and one's manager. I can't deny that I got lucky, though; in spite of Brian having flown to a different coop, I'm not having to go through the process with The Den Mother, but with Pike. I feel like I dodged a really big bullet.
Since part of the paperwork is listing my achievements over the past year
(such as they are), it's kinda like updating my resume. And you never know
when that'll come in handy.
It reminded me of yesterday when I was hunting around for Issue #3 of the suddenly-defunct Total Movie magazine. I was standing in line at a newsstand in Embarcadero Center after having inspected the racks without any luck. Who knew, I might have overlooked it, and the other people in line were also asking about specific magazines, which she points out or hands to them. So when I get to the front of the line, I ask.
Blank stare. I repeat the name of the magazine slowly and describe its probable
appearance (wrapped in plastic with a DVD included). Nothing. Not even so much as an acknowledgment that
they're hearing me, even though we're looking at each other. It's as though since they didn't
immediately know the answer, they just shut down entirely.
A co-worker then piped up and said they didn't carry it. I thanked him and walked away. I'm still
not sure the first clerk even blinked.
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Tuesday, 27 February 2001 (territorial pissings) 1:23pm There you have it: when I downloaded a live Manson bootleg from Napster last night (after having bought his last few albums as soon as they came out), I mortally wounded the record industry. Whoops. I hate when that happens. Meanwhile, I've been playing the good American in other ways. My completed returns arrived from my father yesterday, and I've signed 'em, enclosed checks and sent 'em off. Done, for another year—once the checks clear, anyhow. Something else the chiropractor said last night is something I'd pretty well worked out for myself, but it's for the best that he reiterated it: no working out for a while. It's both frustrating, and a bit of a relief. I was just starting to get back into the habit, but of course it's a habit which on many levels I wish I didn't have to get back into in the first place... In the meantime, the whole incident possibly could have been avoided had I not been putting off getting new buetz. I've been wearing these for nearly a year straight, and the traction's almost entirely gone. With how much it's been raining lately, it's a wonder this didn't happen sooner.
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Monday, 26 February 2001 (don't drink the water) 8:57am Lying down on the table wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and I made it through a three-hour session. Whether it was the vicodin, or I was just in the right position, I don't know. I'm inclined to believe the latter.
The nebula hasn't started to fade yet, retaining its 3" x 3" dimensions. Nor have I called my doctor yet; after
all, I'm on my feet and going on about my business well enough, which says to me that I'm fine and don't need
to go in. I know, I know, that's not a wise attitude.
Oh, and she's right: Sharky's Machine is a Burt Reynolds movie, and the one on Saturday night was in fact
Murphy's Law. Mea culpa.
At first he didn't quite believe me when I said I'm six feet tall (well, six feet and one-half an inch if you wanna get technical); he said I seemed much taller. Gads, I hate that. My father has seemed similarly disbelieving, and to be honest, I don't remember exactly when that measurement was taken. I do remember being relieved, since up to that point I'd been of the presumably erroneous impression that I was actually 6'2", and I was thrilled to lose that inch and a half, even if it was just in the numbers. On the other hand, he scored points when he commented that my nebula wasn't really as bad as it seems, that it just seemed so intense because my skin is so pale. I was lying on my stomach at the time, so odds are he didn't see the big stupid grin on my face. I'm going back on Thursday, and again on Saturday, after that, I don't really know. I don't really have any other spinal issues, so I don't see myself continuing, although that might be partially due to my lingering skepticism about the whole practice. For now, though, it's serving its purpose.
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Sunday, 25 February 2001 (down in the flood) 10:04am Okay, so it isn't like being ill. Sleeping it off didn't work. I hadn't thought it would, but I can hope. Meanwhile, the nebula on my rear is definitely expanding. Maddy and I have arbitrarily concluded that a bruise can take up to 24 hours to fully form, so it may get bigger still. Given the pain involved in lying on my back I probably shouldn't be keeping my zapping appointment today, but I am. I'd be more willing to cancel if the dark hair was more evenly spread across my face, but instead it's concentrated on my upper lip. Y'know, the m-word. Worse, every time I look in the mirror I'm reminded of a moustached guy in my office who creeps me out to no end. For starters, he has a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar at his desk, and whenever I have the misfortune of passing him in the hallway his mouth is always open. Now I understand why the term "mouth-breather" is an insult. He's also on my shitlist because he's given Maddy grief about a Courtney Love poster she has up next to her desk. One day, he gave her his unsolicited, extremely negative opinion about Courtney—i.e., how much he thinks she sucks. Which is fine, he can think whatever he wants about whoever he wants. But it's in kinda poor taste to start talking shit about someone Maddy so clearly admires, especially when she didn't ask him in the first place. But that's just the kinda guy he is, enlightening the rabble with his wisdom. He's also hit on her, gently enough to avoid harrassment charges but insistent enough to be really annoying. Needless to say, he makes her skin crawl even more than mine. So, today, come hell or high water, the upper lip hair goes bye-bye. The unibrow, too. Tomorrow I'm going to make an appointment with my doctor. I don't suspect there's much he can do except tell me that I've hurt myself, but it'll be nice to have something resembling a official word on the subject. And, of course, some more painkillers. I still have vicodin, but it's my zapping stash. Truth be told, though, I'd like to go as easy on the painkillers as possible; I don't want to pull a Chevy Chase. Still, I made it through the wisdom teeth extraction without developing a habit, so I should be okay. Besides, being an American, I've never actually met my insurance-approved doctor. No doubt at some point during the visit I'll say, "You're probably wondering why I'm developing breasts. Funny story, that..."
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Saturday, 24 February 2001 (when i paint my masterpiece) 9:37am Being the hep young urbanites we are, upon leaving work we do what all hep young urbanites do on Friday nights: we went to the gym. Of course, if that's what they all do it explain why not many where there, but I ain't complaining. Maddy and I were able to find ourselves an isolated corner with a few different machines, upon which we proceeded to torture ourselves.
At least, I'm assuming that's why I woke up at 3am with my hips aching. This is especially
inconvenient if, like myself, you tend to sleep on your sides. And I'm very much like myself.
Then again, very much unlike myself I had no interest in turning on the teevee and lamenting the
lack of quality (read: trashy and preferably b&w and/or made in the eighties) early morning programming.
Instead, I wandered into the living room and sat next to Oscar on the couch, half-dozing. When the aching
more or less subsided, I returned to bed and dreamed of things including but not limited to Maddy
disappearing, probably kidnapped and dead. Among other things. The dreams (nightmares, really) seemed to mostly take
place in San Francisco—recognizably San Francisco, no just some nameless dream locale. My subconscious
loves me.
Undaunted, we continued on with our plans for the day, taking the cats to the vet and picking up my 'mones and EMLA from the pharmacy. Ironically, the EMLA probably isn't going to do much for me as I'm lying on the table tomorrow; I'll be much more distracted by my back. We also plunged headlong into the biomass at the Evil Sony Metreon, seeing a 3D IMAX movie called Haunted Castle. All we knew about it was that Harry Shearer did the voices, which was enough to lure us in. The plot itself is too inconsequential to relate, but it's pure, yummy eye candy. While in the area we also swung by Jeffrey's Toys to get some glow-in-the-dark slinkys of the sort which we'd obsessed on while frying at Orky's last week. All the while it hurt to sit down, stand up, things like that, and on more than one occasion I was limping (which I probably would have done whether or not I'd fallen). When we finally got home around nine, I had Maddy take a look at where I'd fallen. Her gasp upon seeing it was so intense, I thought for sure she must be faking it. But, no; I took a look in the mirror, and there it was right at the top of my...um...er...well, you know what part of the body the tailbone is near—a big ugly bruise, seemingly more black than blue. (See? Even my injuries are tres goth.) It's probably what an unsuccessful bio-port installation would have looked like in eXistenZ. Funny how things can change in a flash. It's not really a disability or a handicap, and as Danny observed during the Ingrown Toenail Incident of '91, I'm good about going on about my business in spite of discomfort. I don't suppose I'll be working out or dancing in the near future, and if I've in fact broken my tailbone there ain't a fuckin' thing I can do about it except hope it doesn't take too long to heal.
On the plus side, I'll get to start saying "coccyx" in casual conversation. See? There's always a silver lining. You just
have to know where to look.
If one were to combine penny-ante mysticism with an ironic sense of zeitgeist, one might come to the conclusion that my current state (a slightly more ambulatory version of Ron Kovic, without the numbness) is karmic payback for using Napster. It's like this. I've been hankering to hear a certain Roger Waters song, "Going to Live in L.A." It's an outtake from the Radio KAOS album, and was the b-side to that album's first single. I'd first heard it as a filler on a tape (remember trading live material on cassette, which wasn't considering an industry-destroying threat?), and I've never been able to track down the single, probably because the album came out fourteen years ago and was considered a flop. Go look on CDNow if you like; it ain't there, and there's also the turntable issue. Which is to say, I don't have a turntable. So, for some reason, I checked eBay. I'm not sure what I was expecting to find, but somehow, I found it. An obvious bootleg CD collecting all the material recorded for Radio KAOS. Not that I especially wanted all of it; I would be quite happy with that one song, really. Besides, in spite of what Lars and Dre (I can call him that, y'know) might suggest, I still have to agree with Suck's assessment that eBay is where the real bootlegging money is being made, not Napster. But, much like the Usenet (on which, it goes without saying, the song has never appeared), it's too difficult and diffuse a target. And so, I decided to look on Napster. I was about to install the program when I realized that I was crossing a line I didn't want to cross. Was I having an RIAA-approved epiphany? Nah. I was at work, and while I was able to justify using Napster as a specific tool for a specific problem, I did not want to be a person who Uses Napster At Work. That's just so terribly gauche. I don't suspect I'm being watched specifically—my personal relationship with the adorable little blue-banged goth chick at the front desk of the IT department notwithstanding, I make a point of not causing trouble, so I doubt my personal network habits are of as much interest as those users who seem to consider the department to be their personal enemies. But, still, I can't help but fear if I use it and they notice, they'll think just a little less of me. That's an unpleasant thought. They're the big kids, and I want them to like me. So I downloaded and installed it at home this morning, and wouldn'tcha know, it was very easy to find, and judging by assigned track number it was from the very collection which on eBay started at a mere $15, none of which was going to Roger Waters, BMI or any of the other legally sanctioned coffers. And damn good quality, too. Of course, it couldn't stop there. E had explicitly said he had no objections to the service, so I did a search and got a b-side. And since I tend to try to recreate my acid trips however possible, I looked for the music Orky had played last week, which he'd gotten off Napster in the first place: John Digweed's as yet unreleased Los Angeles. Yep, there it was. Surely, this was me being a Truly Bad Person, since the damn thing wasn't even available for purchase yet, and I was unlikely to purchase it at all. All the same, I set it downloading before we left the house that morning. And a few hours later, I was injured, seemingly out of nowhere. Makes ya think, huh? Oh, and credit where credit is due: restoring my faith just a little, USA is currently showing Sharkey's Machine with Missing In Action coming up next. Mid-eighties Charles Bronson/Chuck Norris Cannon epics? Goddamn, that's what Saturday night's all about!
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Friday, 23 February 2001 (she's your lover now) 8:42am Oh, man. Fuckin' Yahoo has broken the fuckin' webring again. I'm pretty sure I know how to fix it—let's face it, this is the kind of mini-crisis which I live to solve—but it still pisses me off. And I'm definitely shopping around for an alternative... 9:29am There. A little better. Sorta. 10:57am Normally I try to avoid using the men's room on this floor, preferring to share the one in the lobby with the piddlefingered security guards. (For those who've come in late, yeah, I still use the men's room. Among other things, at this moment I have just enough dark hair on my upper lip to make me look more like an f2m.) But we were working on a crunch project, and I'd been hydrating myself quite a bit, so rather than walk downstairs I decided to take my chances. Note to self: some things are not worth the risk. I loathe urinals, so as I enter I pray that one of the stalls is open. The odds are about even, since the single (1) men's room on this entire floor has two stalls and two urinals, ergo if more than four male bladders require emptying at one time a line will form. The door to the big cozy handicapped one is closed, but the smaller one next to it is open halfway, so I head straight for it. Except that, although the door was open, it wasn't unoccupied. So I walked in on, of all people, The Fidget Queen—and I can thank whatever forces control these things that he was urinating so I only had to see his back. Maybe it's a cultural thing (like his disregard for Kleenex) or maybe he just spends so much time in clubs that he'd forgotten that in most places you can actually close stall doors. Of all the people to run into...
Never get off the goddamn boat.
I'm trying to use what I call the Citizen Kane Principle. It goes like this: when The Ex moved out, she took the laserdisc of Citizen Kane. (She asked, I said yes, and there was no drama involved.) If I can live without a decent copy of that, there's a lot of other things I can live without, too. We'll ignore for the moment the fact that I've since acquired a region-free DVD of it, since that kinda skews the whole concept...
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Thursday, 22 February 2001 (blue red and grey) 6:55am Somebody really needs to tell Eminem that if he keeps hugging queers, he's going to turn into one himself. As if those faggy earrings aren't enough.
During the beeg show we were in fact watching the This is Spinal Tap DVD with audio commentary by the band. In case I haven't
mentioned it before, Harry Shearer is god.
You gotta be careful. Don't say a word to nobody about nothing anytime ever.
Sage advice.
On second thought, it's not really a regret. More like an annoyance, especially in that it further confirms the difficulty in
getting decent food around my office. We'd only gone there because Maddy's been having a spectacularly bad day at work (owing
largely to the average maturity level of her department being that of a fifth-grade class) and it sounded like a good comfort/indulgence
kinda thing. Nope. Hell, they don't even have ranch dressing. I don't get that one at all.
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Wednesday, 21 February 2001 (god loves america) 7:18am One of life's simpler pleasures: a long, hot shower (in one's own bathroom) after working out at night. Makes it all worth it. The scale at the gym in SoMa said 187. For as much as I'd like to believe it...
The parking sucked, but as I'd hoped, inside it was nowhere near as crowded or
belligerent as the one on Ocean. And not a single teevee in sight.
When we got home this evening, one of the neighbors across the street was barbecuing something on his second-floor patio. I don't know what it was, and it doesn't really matter—in fact, it was probably nothing more than briquets and lighter fluid at that point. But, damn, it smelled good. Combined with the fact that the sun was about to set over the Pacific (you can't see it from our street but you can hear it and sense its presence), I had a small moment of euphoria about where I live. I do hope to be here for a while.
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