argh.
after at least a year of resisting 'em, and scoffing at people who have 'em and talk at 'em- on the bus and the street and in my face-
"WHERE ARE YOU? WHICH END OF THE PARK? BUT THERE ARE FOUR CORNERS!"
lady, shut the fuck up!
-now I have a goddamn cell phone.
it's the free ugly phone, but it'll serve its purpose, I suppose, which is probably just to annoy me.
I love/hate/love/hate it already.

claustrophobia, anyone?

the apartment was a closet, basically. the previous tenant had lived there for 30 years, and she died in the place. "of natural causes," the guy said.
thanks, but no thanks. the thought of spending even six months in there, thinking about a woman who'd spent the last elderly thirty years of her life in a roughly 11x11 room with a stove and a refridgerator at one end (no kitchen), was enough to make me start itching uncontrollably.
"I have several people who are very interested in this place, just so you know."
yeah, they can have it.

on the bus there were teenagers, most likely coming home from ballet school-
two girls, about 13, giggling like little hyenas and playing some game involving hitting each other's hands as hard as possible; their hair in buns, encased in little hairnets.
the awkward looking blonde one had on a shirt that warned, "don't make me go all Ghetto on you."
and the awkward looking boy, also about 13, was wearing a Hooters shirt...

holy shit, the google site isn't working.

I hate language barriers

but here's some fabulous spam:

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Pledge of Allegiance ruled unconstitutional
Many say ruling by S.F. court hasn't a prayer after appeals

Decision called everything from ridiculous to sublime

Original pledge contained no reference to God

Atheists and pantheists may take a moment to bask in victory

thank you, Matt Groening.

da bomb

saw this idea on Daphne's site- more self-indulgent fun with google and your own name:

SUSAN is a quick and subtle board game for two players.
Susan is DABOMB...
Susan is strongly committed to enhancing educational programs using communications technology.
SUSAN is an acronym for Smallest Univalue Segment Assimilating Nucleus.
Susan is a top Florida residential real estate agent.
Lady Susan is also available as a single plain ASCII e-text file, compressed in binary .zip format <49888 bytes>
Susan is a very gifted intuitive artist...
Susan is listed as a "star of the future"...
Hee! SUSAN is a quick and subtle board game for two players.
Susan is back on the trail!
...there's a tiny "cameo" of Susan in Hugh Grant's latest movie, About a Boy...
Susan is no stranger to Canadian television and radio audiences...
Susan is no stranger to the Northwest club scene and private event venues...
... Susan is not the incumbent superintendent, nor is she the candidate favored by Bill Sizemore.
Susan is a born healer, living her mission abundantly and joyfully!
I LOVE YOU ALL AND SUSAN IS ALWAYS WITH ME!

too much fun.

Dial-a-Song, from They Might Be Giants.

my fashion gurus took me to the mall today.
at this moment I am sporting new, shiny, plastic-cherry-red pvc pants, which I'll be wearing next weekend for the Dyke March party I'll be attending. lord help me, they're hip-huggers. I don't think I'll be sitting or bending over much.
maybe the kiddies can get away with all this butt-crack exposure these days, but not me. oh, no.

AfroKen: don't miss out.

from Letters From the Editor: The New Yorker's Harold Ross, edited by Thomas Kunkel:

To E.B. White
Sept. 16th, 1940

Dear White:
I read the piece in Harper's [on the meaning of freedom] and I think it is a beautiful and elegant thing, probably the most moving item I've read in years and worthy of Lincoln and some of the other fellows that really went to town. I recognize myself as several of the skeptical bastards you enumerate, but am perfectly willing to be kicked around in such a cause. You'll do some good with an argument like that, but all your eloquence can't convince me that there won't be wars in the world for the next two thousand years, and maybe twenty thousand, and honeys, too. The human race isn't ready for peace yet. Christ, my cousin Sallie thinks it's wonderful that her son has joined the air corps and my cousin Art Quaintance in Denver is hollering that the manhood of the country is soft, and hop to it at once. So are you, I guess, but you're using more than wind and you're not blind about it. Anyhow, knock me down anytime you want.
Ross

Today, in downtown San Francisco-
surrounded by cement, eating a boring lunch over the SF Bay Guardian's Bars and Clubs issue, reading the article that Charles wrote about bars in the Tenderloin-
when suddenly something very small bombed past me in the air-
a huge fly?
no! a hummingbird!
I wanted to sing and dance right there.
It was beautiful. It hovered near me and hummed around for a few minutes, trying to get a little bug/lunch action, and then zoomed away.
imagine! a hummingbird, downtown!

John Batteiger's Archy and Mehitabel site just moved to a new domain, and it looks damned spiffy, too.

I've always loved story time

Manual
the way things were meant to be-
fine writing brought to you by the people who meant it, wrote it, loved it, and then gave it to you so you could read in the tub;
made possible by Adobe and the printer in your workplace.

my favorite so far (and I haven't read the whole thing yet) is entitled "How to Be Igor," by Tobias Seamon. With his gracious permission (yet to actually be obtained, she said, red-faced), I shall share some of it with you here:

7. How to Stay Out of Atrocity's Way

Keep busy. Shed the drenched butler's suit and keep climbing. Slither and snatch at chimneys, gutters and the swirling wind itself as you set the kites aloft. Cling to every crack in the slate. Don't look up or the rain will pelt your eyes. Don't look down.
Become philosophical. Once the kites are up, keys jangling invisibly in the violent night, shelter inside the belltower. There, shiver, clutch, feel sorry for yourself, and ponder the matter. Will the storm knock the silks from the skies before the lightning strikes? Will the whole castle burn to the ground? How much money can be scrounged in less than an hour? What is the quickest, most secretive way out of town?

8. When to Stop Being Philosophical

Philosophy is rational and does not encompass all that is real; order is obliviated by pain and abomination. With this limit upon you, when is philosophy impossible?
When all thoughts coalesce into a single, decisive need: to get the hell out.

it continues there.
go, now, read more of Tobias Seamon's fine writing.
(here's a google search to assist you.)
and read the rest of Manual.
I'll print it out for you.
all this self-publishing makes me weepy. I'm going to bed.

at this moment I have a small gray cat purring in my lap, rubbing the side of his face against my arm- and to those of you who scoff at this, or underappreciate it, I can only say-
you eediots. you don't know anything.

Go see the breathtaking Daphne Gottlieb (and others) in Inhibition/Exhibition at the Cowell Theater this weekend.
you can get tickets here.
or you can just buy Daphne's books and have her all to yourself, sort of.
(goodness, you could read them anywhere.)

available through Soft Skull Press, Powell's, and other fine bookstores.
and si, Amazon has them, too, if you must.

It's not that I have nothing to say.

small changes.

calling

Eli says, and I couldn't have said it better:

hi everyone-

I'm not crazy about armchair activism, but this petition is (a)
important and (b) designed in a way that makes it actually usable,
unlike chain-letter petitions.

http://www.urgentcall.org/php/petition.php

Written by Jonathan Schell and others, it's a statement that the U.S.
has not been adopting serious policies against nuclear war and needs to
do so right away. There's more to say, and they say it better than I
can, so please take a moment to read it and add your name if you feel
you can.

nostalgia

call me Tabitha

What d'you know, I'm wearing all black again today (as long as the green underwear doesn't count).

Someone described me yesterday as "kind of witchy," partly because I wear a lot of dark or black clothes. He insisted it was a compliment. Maybe he was afraid of offending me- abracadabrayou'reatoad!

I've never met a witch I didn't like- but then, I don't really travel in a lot of black magic circles.

Ashcroft and Bush Get a Prisoner of War or Something
by Jeff Danziger

this is not a war blog

but since morons apparently are still waging a war on masturbation, I'm officially leaving the "think globally, masturbate locally" button on my site, as a small act of war.
(hey, whoever put up this stupid site proposes to "control all paraphernalia." they also seem very proud that a whole 5 per cent of the population does NOT masturbate. so are they cutting the hands off of 95 per cent of the population, or what? because I'm not sure taking away the toys is really going to be effective. definitely less fun, though.
but then, these folks also propose selling only sliced cucumbers, carrots and sausages. I don't even know why I'm bothering- clearly they're wacko. what about zucchini? duh.)
(I'm so sheltered here in my urban, LGBT community that I have trouble believing that people like this truly exist- but then I pinch myself. Just remember, if Fred Phelps is real, anything is possible.)
via curious frog

note: I can't actually bring myself to link to Phelps' site (godhatesfags.com). instead, as an antidote, let me highly recommend GodHatesFigs.com, brought to you by Charles Anders.

here's a fabulous interview with Eartha Kitt.
I once saw Ms. Kitt on Politically Incorrect- at one point she got so fed up with the morons on the show talking over and interrupting each other that she stood up, pounded her fists on the coffee table in front of her, and started yelling for everyone to shut up and communicate like grown-ups. She pounded and yelled, and her hair flew about, and when she'd splendidly made her point, she sat down, smoothed a hand over her head and looked like a queen.
Everyone shut up. It was fabulous.

When properly fueled (scotch, etc.), I do a mean lip-synch of "I Wanna Be Evil."

Rebecca has this wonderful Dietrich Bonhöffer quote on her site:
"In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich."

I don't have time to write right now-
but I couldn't resist sharing this photo of my dear brother (the one with the finger).
what nice friends he's got.

Tonight I had the great pleasure of meeting Jish, Rebecca, Kristin, Laura, Ev and a number of other folks in honor of Jish's birthday.
s'il vous plait, let's do it again sometime, non?
Happy Birthday Week, Jish!



on my mind:
-handshakes
-the state of contemporary music
-life in SF (then and now- bars, people, culture, you name it)
-people with day/office jobs vs. everyone else
-my new favorite bar: The Hemlock Tavern on Polk
-my pillow. Gute Nacht!

well, knock me over with a tiny little feather:
guimp.com is buckets of tiny fun.
(I found it on the 5k site. Their deadline is approaching!)

definitely wiser

uh, right.
so, now I'm thirty and one week.
I don't know where to start.
here are a few things I read today.
start there and I'll fill in the blank week later.
really, I will.

A Russian director films the flow of time,
Joan Dupont, International Herald Tribune

What Else Are We Missing?,
William Safire, New York Times

50% of Afghans, the Women, Fight to Assert Their Rights,
Barbara Crossette, New York Times