Value System

I've realized that the way I value people's worth as human beings is entirely the result of the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunder Dome. That's the one with Tina Turner in an awesome chain mesh ensemble and the giant earrings. She gives a soliloquy in the movie where she explains that before the nuclear war she was just a truck stop waitress, but now she controls Bartertown. I thought at the time that this was a very logical career planning strategy, probably because when someone is dressed that glam, you pay attention.

It was at that point in my life I started judging the value of a person's place in society by their utility after the nuclear war that I always saw as inevitable. This means that the two most valuable professions are scientist and auto mechanic. Anybody in entertainment, finance, fashion, music, interior decorating, and a whole lot of other professions is pretty much useless. Some other useful people would include gardeners, chefs, carpenters, ditch diggers, seamstresses, bodybuilders, and Survivor contestants.

This post nuclear career rating system was all fine and good when I was beginning my career in science. Then I switched careers to computer science that is a lot less relevant in an era without electricity, but it's still better than a career writing about nightclubs and cocktails. What use does that bring to society after the war? I doubt anyone would trade me food for a scathing fashion critique, so I'd probably starve.

Therefore, I've had to reevaluate my ratings system to jive with my job. From now on, only the careers that produce the most pleasure in the here and now have value. That justifies my career, as well as those of massage therapists, hookers, topless go-go dancers, fluffy bunnies, and movie stars. We are the people who matter, making your everyday life better before the nuclear war blows you away. I now say scientists are useless, unless they invent an ultra-vibrator or something.

Escape from Hell

My new Yahoo AT&T SBC Jingle Heimer Schmidt DSL service is finally up and running. As you'd expect, they load a whole lot of junkware on your harddrive along with the connection software, and I probably clicked OK on the box that says they can sell your personal data to everyone. But since they are everyone, I figure they already know I'm poor so selling my consumer demographic won't be a big moneymaker for them.

Camper is the Best!

Here is the Guardian's Best of the Bay featurette (on newsstands Wednesday) I wrote on the future of the Valencia Street Corridor. I also gave out some Best Of's on the street to:

• Range's drinks
• Scarlet Sage's witchy-sounding herbs
• The Phoenix Irish Bar's green-vegetable-free menu
• Sunflower's two-headed entrance
• Valencia Pizza and Pasta's heaps of cheap food
  

Return to DSHell

So the retarded fucknuts at AT&T have decided to make my life even more miserable after switching to their crappy DSL service. I turned off my connection three days before they were to switch on my new one as directed, but then on that day they called to say they wouldn't be connecting me for another week.

So, six phone calls later to eight different idiots both in India and Indiana, I'm set up with a dial-up account to use until next week. I've never used the modem in my computer (I'm not actually sure where it came from) and it appears there is a good reason- it craps out on me randomly. That, and the 26K connection speed I often achieve, make this experience lovely.

Not that there is a communications monopoly or anything, but their website says AT&T, the DSL billing and line service is through Yahoo! internet, and the email that comes with the account has an SBC domain. There service is cheaper than all the other ones, but the level of bullshit I've had to put with already is making it a bad investment.

Stinky

The problem with Spare the Air days is that the public transportation is all free. This is to encourage people to take public transit instead of driving and creating bad smog conditions. It's a nice theory.

The reality is that it's like free ice cream day for the degenerate homeless of San Francisco. Though many of them take every opportunity to sneak on the bus or train without paying as it is (and drivers are too pussy to stop them), it's the really nasty homeless who take transit on Spare the Air Day.

Now, in San Francisco the bus is almost never a pleasant experience. Frequently, it's nightmarish. But one builds a tolerance to it. But the BART system, which is sort of like a light rail and sort of like a subway, has no free access points where degenerates can just hop on. Thus, it is usually by far cleaner and efficient and not a bad way to travel.

But on Spare the Air day, it's all free. That means that all the stankest of the stanky hop on the BART and filthify it.

It's bad enough that on hot days the urine and excrement on the streets here smell twice as nasty. So do the homeless who go to the bathroom without removing their pants. So I think, instead of free transit rides for the populace, on Spare the Air days we should give free (mandatory) showers to the homeless. That would result in more relief for more people.

Why aren't I in politics?

Spare the Campair

Scorcher! The hot weather we've been having in San Francisco is especially hot in my apartment. The back wall of my apartment faces east. On that side is the kitchen and bathroom windows. I cover them during the day to keep it cooler, but it doesn't matter. My apartment is so poorly insulated that the walls on the entire side of my cottage get hot. In the lazy Susan in the kitchen, which touches on that wall, peanut butter turns liquidy and cans of food get warm. In the bathroom medicine cabinet, my toothpaste and skin cream heat up and get runny. In the living room, my aquarium heat up an extra two degrees during the day. I've started shutting my bedroom closet door to keep the heat in that pocket rather than releasing it into my office.

In the afternoon, the sun comes in from the other side of the building, where most of the windows are. This effect isn't as bad though, as there are buildings blocking most of the direct sunlight, but still there isn't even any cool air until 6PM. At that point I turn on the fans to try to suck as much cool air in as I can before it gets dark.

Because after dark, having the windows open attracts all sorts of bugs, and it's really not fair that I have a spider problem in my one-bedroom apartment. It's the price you pay for princely lodgings I guess...

Scratches

This morning's volunteer project saw my group weeding out a section of the SF Botanical Garden. This little thicket hadn't been cleared of weeds in a long time, so there were lots of them. In particular, there were lots of blackberries- not the fruit, just the thorny tentacles.

Blackberry is a very skilled weed. It grows over the top of other plants, then every few feet drops another root down to the ground. So at any point if you break it, the root part will just sprout anew. The roots tunnel deep into the earth, and if there is a tree root or rotten wood or log anywhere near it, the root will dig under it so you have to move the log or dig into the tree's root system to get the blackberry out.

It's also one of the most pervasive weeds in the Botanical Garden, so if you leave an area unattended like the area we were in today, a single "mother root", as we call it, will connect a system of thorny tendrils extending out more than 20 feet in several directions. That results in a lot of scratched and bleeding volunteers. I look like I fell into a box of feral kittens or a heroin addict with ADD.

It's not usually so grueling or dramatic, doing gardening work. I often try to make weeding more macho by using the biggest possible tools and shouting while holding the tap root over my head, "Behold my vanquished enemy!" But today I think such boasts were appropriate. And besides, the cuts still sting six hours later. I think tomorrow I'm going to go out for pancakes with blackberry syrup, to drink the blood of my defeated foe.

Travel Writing

The trip I took to Portland Maine a couple weeks ago was paid for by the Maine Department of Tourism, so that I could write a travel piece on Portland, Freeport, Kennebunkport, and Ogunquit. I've written dozens of travel stories before about places I've visited, but those were usually written after the fact and on my dime. This was my first time getting flown somewhere specifically to write about that place.

It wasn't the glamorous kind of travel junket people hear about, where writers get flown first class to the fanciest hotels in the world and spend all day sampling the local caviar, only to return home, write up a 200-word blurb about it, and show off their dark savage tans for the next month.

No, this was a very do-it-yourself trip. I flew into the Boston airport, picked up the cheapest rental car we could find, and drove two hours the first night to Portland- which has its own airport but the flights to Boston were cheaper. They comped my hotels, arranged for several meals, and gave me a stipend to spend on other meals.

I think I spent a little bit more than the stipend amount, and that's because I'm a vegetarian and the meals are a lot cheaper that way. One lobster dinner would have cost as much as three of my veggie burgers, and then I would have been really in the red. I wasn't starving by any means, but it did take some skillful budgeting to make the cash last.

Now, if I were writing a feature piece for a national travel magazine, the publication would have paid expenses, and some of those places are very generous. Some publications like the New York Times prohibit writers from taking anything fore free at all. Ethics- what a pain! But I'm not writing for them yet. The thing is, I'm not totally sure I would want to.

While on this trip to Maine I wasn't thinking about the number of words in the final story I'd have to write. Instead I made a point to see everything I could, stop into every store, eat at a different restaurant for every meal, and at least swing by all the major attractions if not stop into them for an hour or two. In other words, I tried to be as thorough as I could.

But don't get the impression that I didn't enjoy my time. I had a good time, saw nearly everything there was to see, and can convey accurately to the readership of the magazine why they would want to visit the area. Did I have a great time, partying all night and spending a good part of each morning hungover, wearing sunglasses, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee at outdoor cafes like I usually do when I travel? No, I was there working. Ethics- what a pain!

And being there working and trying to see everything, I couldn't do a lot of other work that I would've gotten done if I'd stayed home. Instead, I spent six days working exclusively on one story that in the end will pay less than $500. That's not very good pay for hard work. The good news is that since Day Job pays me full benefits, I was still getting paid while traveling.

I guess the lesson I've learned from this jaunt is that either I shouldn't worry about being so thorough (as I used about a tenth of the content I could have written) or should start writing for publications that can afford to pay expenses, or travel to places that have a lot of money to spend wooing travel writers. But in the end I went on a vacation to the opposite coast for free, and even if what I got paid for being there wasn't very much, I got to break out of my bubble and walk around someplace that isn't my ghetto for a little change. So it was probably better for me mentally than financially, and that makes it worthwhile.

It's in the Sauce

I tried this new product called Tofu 2 Go, which isn't too bad for a portable tofu product. Part of the reason I got it is because of the included packet of "Jazzed Ginger Soy Sauce" that I had misread as "Jazzed Ginger Joy Sauce." That would be a much better name.

Smooth Operator

It just took me an hour on the phone to switch my DSL service. 40 minutes of the time was on with some southern retard who had no idea what she was saying and asked me the same questions at least three times apiece from the script. The process should have taken three minutes:
What speed do you want? What is your Operating System? Which modem do you want? Nope, 40 minutes for that.

THEN, the best part was they have a "verifier" come on the line. This is someone who knows what he's talking about as opposed to the person you've been wasting your time with. He asks the exact same questions, at a much faster pace, and could have done the entire transaction.

Every time I have to interact with them, I remember just how back AT&T fucking sucks. And I'll take a phone support person from India over one from Indiana any day.

Books and More Books

Yesterday ended up being the day of books. My first book experience began at the gym, which is now officially my favorite place to read while using the elliptical trainer, stairmaster, or bikes. Not only does reading on aerobic equipment make time fly, but the more exciting the book the harder I push it.

I was finishing In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick for the second time. It's the story of the whaleship Essex, which was sunk by a whale (and was the inspiration for Moby Dick), and the survivors in three little whaleboats were on the open water for three months resorting to cannibalism before making it to safety. It's a great book and therefore, I got totally pumped at the gym.

Then I went to a networking event called Books and Booze, which are two things I like very much. My agent (and I still love saying that) was one of the sponsors of the event at 111 Minna. Tons of people from Chronicle Books and the Stanford Publishing Course and other publishers were there.


I met up with an editor from DK who was in town from NYC. We met the previous day at Rye for a get-to-know-you event. We've been discussing a book idea that I need to get my butt into gear and finish a proposal on. DK makes beautiful books, so I really want that to happen.

Anyway, Books and Booze was packed only an hour into it, but then I had to leave. It was my book club night, and I had to show up because I chose the book- In the Heart of the Sea. We met at Spec's, as it's a nautical-themed bar and we thought that would be appropriate. It turns out that unlike my previous selection, this book was well received by the group.

I picked this one as a retaliation for the last book someone in the group chose, Snowflower and the Secret Fan. Worse than being a total chick book, it looked like a total chick book. One on the MUNI some midwestern tourist lady with horrible frosted hair yells out to me from across the train, "You like that book? I just finished it!" So I figured a nonfiction account of a shipwreck would be a good alternative to that. And it was- the only other guy member of the book club actually showed up for the first time in a year.

Four drinks into the night, I decided I needed another drink. I stopped in to the Pilsner on the way home. I didn't know anyone there so I sat up by the window and finished another book under the fluorescent light. It was The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore. That guy is hilarious and now I have to go read all the rest of his books. I was a little bit tipsy at that point so it took me a minute to remember how the book ended when I woke up this morning, but then I did.

And speaking of books, did you know that I wrote a book? Yes, it's terrific. Sometimes I forget to self-promote here.

Library

Today is the day I usually work from home all day long, but it's also the day my landlord decided to overhaul the electrical system in my apartment building, so I had to leave to get any work done. I'm in the Mechanic's Institute Library, a private library to which I pay a membership fee, trying to work, but the people-watching is distracting.

Most of the members here are 80 years old or older. Half the people walk with canes, a few with walkers, and in general the place looks more like the day room in a rest home instead of a research environment. I just watched one guy shuffle to the bathroom and back- it took him almost half an hour to accomplish the task.

The last couple of times I've been in, though, I've noticed some younger people doing work. Unfortunately, they look like your average corporate douchebags rather than
hot young intellectuals. They make a point of having lots of folders and slim laptops and scratching their balls a lot. I think I like the old people better.

N.Y. N.Y. N.Y.

I'm watching a six part PBS documentary on the history of New York by Ric Burns. Usually, I love these long, drawn out history DVDs because they make great background sound while I'm doing projects. But this one is getting really annoying really quickly.

Every segment is like six historian writers postulating on New York's New Yorkness without any outside reference whatsoever, like, "He came from somewhere else to start over. He was the quintessential upstart. That's so New York! People come to New York from other places. If you want to be the same person, you stay where you are. If you want to reinvent yourself, you come to New York. New Yorkers are people who come from other places to New York to become New Yorkers in New York."

Why don't you just show six writers jacking off on the Statue of Liberty and get it over with?

Are You Ready to Roller Rumble?

When I first moved here in 1996, the American Roller Derby League was hosting roller derby matches in Kezar Stadium next to Golden Gate Park. I'd go with Amy and Keith and Vanessa to every game. We'd smuggle in a bottle of bourbon to each match and get shitty drunk while cheering on our favorite people.

And oh, the people! This is not a young person's sport. In fact, many of the players looked like they've been around the track a few times, if you know what I mean.

And though there are now punk rock hipster versions of the sport making a comeback, I look forward to July 29, when the old teams (Bay Bombers vs. the L.A. T-Birds) take to the track again at Kezar. You up for it?

And even if you're not in town to join me, you really should take a look at what is probably the worst website ever created.

Business Speak

"This plan is about leveraging our synergies and fueling for additional growth,"” said Karen Magee.

OH THANKS KAREN MAGEE, THAT CLEARS IT RIGHT UP, YOU MBA-hole.

This quote comes from and Advocate press release. It goes blah blah blah like that and then announces a layoff.

Live from San Francisco

So my experiment in real-time blogging while traveling was a failure. Oh well. I am back and unpacked and just realized that I left the nice shiny black windbreaker I bought for 33% off at the North Face Outlet store in Freeport in some bar in Ogunquit. Derr.