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As they must, the temperatures are going back down. Somewhat. Then they'll go down a lot. Then they'll go back up. And down. Eventually we'll all grow old and die. Thou shalt not hold things one's stoned girlfriend says against her. I think that's, like, the 14th or 15th Commandment. The one that was on the tablet which Moses dropped because he was on a nod. Heroin was much more potent in those days, y'know.
9:02am Okay, here's my deal. Yes, I know this isn't really a heatwave. I'm from Fresno. In the summer, we considered temperatures like this to be a blessing. (To me it was metaphoric, but to some poeple it really was a blessing from their gawd. Fresno is filled with very stupid people. This is, after all, the town whose response to the Columbine shootings was to ban Marilyn Manson. All I'm saying is, in Fresno, stupidity is frequently mistaken for godliness.) I haven't forgotten. Personally, I still feel it's too fucking hot, and I don't like it. That it's hotter elsewhere don't impress me none. I ain't elsewhere, I'm here, and if I could be elsewhere, it wouldn't be an elsewhere that's hotter. Dig? Dig.
11:44am The web is not print; print is not the web. One is not better or worse than the other. They're simply different, and need to be treated as such. Thank you very much.
1:51pm So I'm waiting for the elevator in the lobby. Not by choice; if it was up to me, I'd walk back up the stairs which I'd used to descend from the third floor. But no, our level is locked from the stairwell. The second floor is accessible and probably the fourth, but not ours. I'm sure it makes sense to somebody. Anyway, in the reflective surface of the door I see The Den Mother entering the lobby. Fuck. I'm going to have to share the elevator with her, no question. Can't get out of this one. Could be worse, though. She's creepy, but doesn't make my skin want to jump off and run away like The Fidget Queen. I turn and say hello. See? I'm civil. I seem to have developed something of a reputation for being antisocial. That's not true at all. I'm asocial. There's a difference. The elevator doors open, and we enter. She presses the "3" button. The light around the button comes on, confirming that the third floor has been selected as a destination. Unsatisfied with this evidence, she presses the buttong again. Again. Again. And again. Then she sees someone approaching, and puts out her arm to keep the doors from closing. (The doors must have been so confused. Christ, lady, make up your fucking mind!) The person, whom I couldn't see from my angle, joins us and presses the "2" button. Once. TDM doesn't do anything, apparently willing to let the other person risk fate. The elevator stops at the second floor, and our fellow traveller disembarks. As soon as they're through the door, TDM starts hammering away at the "3" button, as if to make up for the lost time. I, realizing that I'm witnessing a scary glimpse of something close to but probably not quite obsessive-compulsive behavior, manage to neither laugh nor convey how utterly surreal it all felt. As the door opened to the third floor—her tireless work paid off!—she upped the surrealism ante: "How fast can you eat two tacos?" I know a trick question when I hear one. "Depends on how big they are." She informed me that she had to eat two tacos in five minutes. Good to know. Unfortuantely, it intrigued me, and I asked her where she got them, since every food-related establishment in the area seems to be closing down. She said she got them at El Gran Taco on Broadway, which is actually my favorite (and out of the question for me on a day like today—not enough shade between points A & B). At which point our paths diverged. Brian told me the other day that she wasnted a copy of my most recent performance evaluation. It's glowing, but I'm still nervous.
3:41pm ...but not as glowing as this bunny! The next raver accessory, no doubt.
4:34pm And speaking of accessories, I've come to realize I want a hat. Fuck. I hate it when this happens. Time to dig in until another irrational surge of "wanna" passes. Unless, of course, I see a really cool one.
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A new case of Penguin Mints arrived yesterday. Not a moment too soon.
4:22pm It's been a good day not to go outside. I'm craving chicken fried rice in the worst way, though.
sometime after midnight
funny how anger and guilt never entirely go away, isn't it?
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As I suspected, Yahoo doesn't want me to change the colors on the webring page—unless it's to one of their eight (8) predetermined color schemes, all of which involve cheerful colors on a white background. (Sunflower smiles, everyone!) Just for kicks I emailed them and asked how I can create my own color scheme, pointing out that my pre-takeover colors are not longer available. I don't expect an answer, but at least I'll have tried. According to weather.com, Alameda will be hitting 89°F today. Always reliable for scarier numbers, sfgate gives Oakland 100°F, and whatever Oakland gets, so does Alameda. We'll see. I'm getting zapped today regardless of the heat. It simply can't matter. The really annoying part? I bought a keen new jacket this weekend, a long black Matrix-y leather trenchcoat. For $150, marked down from $500. I'd been really wanting a new one lately, feeling very exposed by how short my current jacket is on me. Madeline may insist I have great legs, but I don't always want them exposed quite so much. I'd actually been looking for a jacket shorter than the one I ended up with, kinda like Scully's in the X-Files movie, but I'm not complaining. Except that it's too fucking hot to wear it right now. Ah, irony.
12:34pm Our power went out early Sunday morning. No, that's not entirely true. It didn't go out; it went low. As PG&E put it when I called, our voltage was low. That meant there was enough power for the lights to be on, but not enough for them to actually provide any real illumination. I'd first discovered this when I stumbled into the bathroom, still half-asleep. I turned on the light. It was entirely too dim, but I suspected it just meant my eyes weren't open enough. I rubbed my eyes, opened them wide. Nope, the lights were definitely low. Oh, great. I'm stuck in a dream. I hate it when this happens. My computer had restarted itself, and the xmas lights in both the bedroom and living room were barely visible. Turning on the regular light in the living room, it proved to be be less bright than the xmas lights at full power. I'm not a fan of bright light, but this wasn't quite right, either. The moving parts in both the VCR and my CD-alarm clock were very confused, making loud whirring sounds. We turned off all the power strips, called the power company—we figured they must know, but still, we needed to know they knew—and waited. Eventually we went back to sleep, but it wasn't easy with the fans turned off. Maddy watched the clock on her side of the bed slowly dim and then blink out entirely, like a Langoliers-esque dimensional shift. It was eerie as hell, and a reminder of how we're always on the verge of returning to stone knives and bearskins. Well, okay, that's kinda severe, but still. One major catastrophe is all it would really take. Have a nice day.
3:21pm Burnout referred to me as "he." Maddy used "she." I'm accustomed to it.
3:58pm Of course the power was fluctuating this weekend—it's a fucking heatwave, after all. I'm now going to go lay on a table for four or five hours and have electrified needles poked into my upper lip. There's an undeniable logic to the plan, don't you think?
4:05pm I feel naked. I hate this. I've always sympathized with Linus...
sometime after midnight Okay, that went a lot better than I'd expected. We got a late start because he didn't arrive quite on time, but that's okay, if only because it gave my body a chance to regulate its temperature beforehand. Ergo, no rivers of sweat pouring into my eyes as usual. I admit I was a little worried when six rolled around and he wasn't there, largely because I was doped up to just the right degree, and I hate wasting a buzz, albeit a vicodin/Green Death buzz. The session was five hours; we would have gone on longer, except the transbay transit system shuts down around midnight and I didn't want to risk getting stuck. All the same, it's as thorough a job as he's done in a long time, and most importantly, my upper lip is clear. I explained from the outset in no uncertain terms that if he were to do absolutely nothing else, he was gonna remove the hair from my upper lip. Period. He understood. I went ahead and made an appointment for early October. Just in case.
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Heat should not be taken personally. "Okay, everyone. Extend and roll." I don't recall the tattoo, though.
9:10pm In those unfortunate times which gastrointestinal distress requires that one simply must sit down in a public restroom (note to self: after leaving Burnout's place with the munchies, which is inevitable, do not eat at The Outback)—and this is admittedly from the perspective of someone who is still able to stand up while urinating—I think it's good to be able to see the face of the person who, seconds before, pissed all over the seat. I'm glad I had that opportunity today. It has a habeus corpus sort of feel, or like meeting your own executioner. To expect to him have, say, lifted the seat and then flushed when finished all would have been too much to ask. I'd sooner expect an SUV driver to use their turn signal.
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Two sets of bad dreams, waking up from both of which to find one of my arms has gone numb from sleeping on it wrong. (Can you sleep on your arm correctly?) Hence, no more sleep for me. Madeline's sleep has been equally troubled, but she's having another go at it, cuddling with the seal in my absence (presumably). Quite hardy, the kid is. Meanwhile, Yahoo's takeover of the webring continues to suck much ass. I may not be able to restore the net.goth journal pages to the previous colors. Does it matter? No. Does anyone besides me care? No. Alas.
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"WARMING TREND AHEAD." Oh, whatever. Can I do anything about it? No. Indeed, we seem to be completely ignoring the warning signs. As though it weren't bad enough that I'm going to get zapped in Alameda on Monday, we'll be travelling into the East Bay on Sunday as well, to Burnout's place in Richmond. Because...um...we're brave. Yeah, that's it. And besides having yet to actually meet him, he has a beagle which I think Maddy is going to like. I won't be shaving between now and then, of course. I'm a little bit embarrassed by this, but then again, Burnout's seen me looking much worse. We go back three or four years, which by my current standards is an eternity...
12:53pm Cleaning up Front Page code is like trying to remove a facehugger from Alien without killing the patient. Except there's a lot more acidic blood flying around.
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"PLEASANT WEATHER: It's time to get back to Indian Summer weather for the Bay Area. Heading into the weekend, that's exactly what is in store." Pardon me, sfgate, but what the hell does that mean? It's gonna be hotter? Colder? What? I'd always thought that Indian Summer was the nastier part of the season, the especially hot and unpleasant time when you wish the Autumn would hurry up and arrive. Or is this another case of "hot" equals "pleasant?" Since, you know, just so long as the sun is shining then everything's right with the world... Speaking of everything being in its proper place, an independently ownwed market near the office closed down unexpectedly; it appears they were evicted. It's the second such closure of a market in that area recently, bringing the official number of such stores down to "none." The other store had lost its lease, which in San Francisco terms is essentially the same as eviction. Unfortunately, also losing its lease was an overpriced none-too-shabby chinese restaurant. Nothing has replaced it or the store, although shortly before these closures started, a Starbuck's opened right across the way. (One time I was sitting the lobby of the chinese restaurant waiting to pick up an order to take back to the office. A fellow in an apron walked up to me and asked if I wanted to try whatever it was he was carrying on his tray, snacks or appetizers of some kind. I declined. He asked the other customers, then left. Turns out he was from Starbuck's. Maybe it's just me, but isn't bad etiquette to go into a restaurant and attempt to lure people to another establishment. Not if you're Starbucks, I guess.) I'm not suggesting a connection, because obviously if I was I'd be a dirty commie rat attempting to infringe on Starbucks' right to function in the free marketplace. Just an observation, that's all. Having dinner with Danny tonight. I didn't shave, since I knew I'd be wanting to again this evening before I see him, so I'm just going to wait until tonight. I wonder how long it'll take before I start to regret not having done it this morning. My mom wrote last night; her wedding as been postponed. The poor thing. Going to show that ironic self-awareness is genetic in my family, the subject line of the message was "Here I Go Again," a reference to a few other engagements which have been broken. At least this time around I'm fairly convinced that I'm not a catalyst, unlike her breakup with Earl last year. I still suspect it happened a little too soon after my coming out to her to be a coincidence. We went into the Haight last night. I picked up Emmylou Harris's new album at Amoeba and saw Easy Rider at The Red Vic, although neither of these things makes us hippies. (Just to clarify.) We ran into Vlad at Amoeba and he joined us for the movie. (For the record, he behaved himself and didn't talk during the movie.) The weird thing is, he'd just dyed a large chunk of his hair purple. Vlad with purple hair. That's going to take a bit of getting used to.
9:06am Danny just cancelled on dinner tonight for work-related reasons. I can't be upset, since I did the same thing a couple weeks ago with the much flimsier excuse of sickness. It'll happen eventually. My coding on this page has been incredibly sloppy lately, up to and including this morning. I do apologize. Damn those alien brain-leeches, anyway! Actually, I've been distracted by inadequacy compared to seanbaby.com. Check out his SuperFriends page and you'll see what I mean. Trust me.
11:53am Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck! Must remember to close font tags...
2:18pm So I've bought C for Dummies in an attempt to gain at least a passing familiarity with the language, and hopefully make my anemic skillset a little more relevant. Stop laughing. It could happen.
3:46pm I'm again feeling tempted to call and make an appointment to get zapped next week. I don't really want to—a part of me wants to sit in the corner, arms wrapped around my legs, rocking back and forth, saying "No more bad stingy thing, no like, make it go away"—but all the evidence I need is on my upper lip.
4:30pm And just before I'm about to call, I look again at sfgate's weather page, which is a bit more straightforward this time: "Warmer Weekend Ahead: We won't see alot of change over the next 48 hours. Then, the heat will start pumping up the temps. In fact, we could be talking about triple digits by early next week." Of course. Leave it to me to try to get zapped on a 100+ degree day. External comfort simply cannot be the issue, though.
4:54pm And in that spirit, I have an appointment next Monday. I won't be at my best if I meet up with Danny later that week as has been suggested, but hey, c'est la vie and all.
10:38pm It was just another busy night at the Albertson's (nee Lucky's) when, suddenly, from our checkout line, a very surprised clerk could be heard: "Handcuffs!" It's such a shame when store employees don't know their own stock. The handcuffs were even on sale, for Christ's sake.
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Yesterday was a good ol' fashioned 12-hour day at work. 13, actually, but who's counting? I genuinely don't mind them. I like that adrenal rush, the sense of doom as the sky falls to pieces and the higher-ups are running around in the proverbial yet familiar headless chicken guise. Reminds me of the old days, the grind and subsequent teeth-cutting at Organic and Autodesk. Although I'm very happy to be able to do it now in relative privacy with the big spider hanging overhead, even if nobody's yet commented it except Leigh. We left work at 10pm, and she gave me a ride home in her SUV. Hers is the only I've ever rode in, largely because she's the only person I know who owns one. And for as much as I consider them evil and feel they should be banned within San Francisco city limits, in her case it makes sense: she lives in Novato, has a family and frequently drives in the country and mountains. Unlike, say, my former upstairs neighbor, who lived within walking distance of where he worked, but had an SUV because he could afford one. What's the point of consumption if isn't conspicuous? Bad enough he had to deal with those freeloaders living downstairs...
12:37pm So I got home at around 10:30pm, alerted the sleeping Madeline of my presence, and proceeded to futz around on the computer as I'm wont to do before going to bed. After chowing down on the sourdough loaf Maddy had thoughtfully bought me and making sure my computer would be downloading from the Usenet through the night, I joined her. (I fret about my gut, then proceed to consume vast quantities of starch before sleeping. Connecting dots is so bothersome...) At some point in a dream, I was in a hotel/dorm situation. I think it was based on my horrid senior trip, when I was very much alone with a group of people who wanted nothing to do with me. And so it was again, in a room with three or four guys who didn't like me very much. Chronologically it was pre-transition, but even then, I wasn't the most masculine thing in the world. I wasn't all that femmey, either. I was just...formless. The alpha-male picked up on me right away and started giving me static. I asked him if I should just leave, and he agreed wholeheartedly that yes, I should leave. I was not wanted there. I tried to leave, but couldn't It was very Bunuelian. Nothing was stopping me as such, but I couldn't go forward, either. He was losing his temper. I didn't belong, why couldn't I see that? My presence offended him. My existence offended him. I should not be at all, and if I simply to, I'd better not do so around him. Why wasn't I understanding that? He was growing angrier and angrier. He started hitting me. It was with a pillow so it didn't really hurt (my subconscious showing a rare degree of mercy), but the point was clear. It was his world, a man's world, his kind of world, and whatever the hell I was even then, I didn't belong. Fortunately, I woke up back in what passes for mine shortly thereafter.
4:51pm I made the conscious decision not to shave this morning. That I'm able to make such a decision at all is a bad sign. 400, huh?
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Oh, hello. Good to see you again.
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Okay, I'm live. Even if nobody else is.
11:26am I bought Martha Stewart Holiday: Halloween today. My feelings are mixed, but I knew that if I didn't get it, I'd wish I had. On the one hand, I still haven't forgiven her for the whole Bolinas thing. On the other hand—I don't know if the whole Bolinas thing is even real or not. It may very well not be. It's till just a rumor, and I'd like to think I know better than to believe every rumor I hear.
2:45pm By "live," of course, I mean that I'm actually writing during the day in question. sfgoth is still down, so there's no telling when any of this will go live in that sense. Whenever. Cami's server is back up. I think it was back up shortly after I'd panicked about it last month. I need to get in touch with her. It's been too long since we've gotten together, and she's another on the long list of people who've never met Maddy. A very long list, it seems. Emmylou Harris, whom I both respect musically and is also a fairly good example of how I hope I'll age (but I suspect I won't), has a new album coming out tomorrow. It's been compared to, among other things, Lou Reed's work and Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. Sigh. Perhaps I'm relying a little too heavily on links today? Naah.
4:32pm I wore makeup on Saturday for the first time since the eels show in June. No particular occasion; I just decided to do so before we left for our counseling session in the morning. Fairly simple, just foundation, eyeliner and filling in my lips. We did a lot of running around afterwards, not getting home until that evening. Some places I stood out, some I did not. I was particularly noticeable in the Daly City Safeway. Nobody directly gave me any shit, but I suspect my presence ruffled a few feathers. And why not? After all, the shadow on my upper lip looks as prominent as ever. To me, anyway. And there's nothing else I can use as a frame of reference for these things. It probably came as no surprise to anyone when we bought the one of the Halloween decorations on sale, a big spider. It's now hanging from the ceiling of my office, which won't come as a surprise to anyone around here, either. I may never really pass. That's one of those things I have to come to terms with, and why the notion of going stealth is somewhat laughable to me. Yeah, right. Like there's ever going to be a time when someone could point to me and say, "She used to be a boy" and the inevitable response wouldn't be "Whaddaya mean, used to be?" We rented the DVD of Jacob's Ladder Saturday night. Maddy had never seen it, and it's always been a favorite of mine for its wonderfully nightmarish tone. When the movie came out in 1990, a lot of people said I looked like Tim Robbins. Mind you, nobody really knew who he was, so it phrased more along the lines of, "Hey, you look just like that guy from Jacob's Ladder." Strangers were literally coming up to me on the street saying this. I always took it as a compliment, since A) he was living with Susan Sarandon, and B) The Ex had a huge crush on him. If I was going to have to look like a boy (and at the time my options were, shall we say, limited), I could do worse. This was before I really put on the weight, natch.
11:32pm On something of a whim (in that we've been wanting to see it but the decision to go was made on the spur of the moment), we saw The Cell tonight. My main Roger Ebert's been getting a lot of flak for praising the movie. I must admit, I'm on Roger's side on this one, and not just because it was the same director who made the "Losing My Religion" video.
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