September 30, 2006
Books vs Boyfriend
On Thursday I went to the annual SF Library booksale and brought home 30 books for $50.
Today, after more coffee than my brain could reasonably handle, I went into the dining room where the Lad was clattering away at the keyboard and where my shelf of unread books was sitting patiently.
"How are you today, books?" I asked.
"Fine, thanks!" I answered myself in a high-pitched voice. "We like to be alphabetized here on this shelf together!"
"The Waughs are pushing," I complained in a lower-pitched voice that clearly came from the Trollope section.
"Don't be pushy, fellows," I warned them. "I will read all of you in time."
"We're looking forward to being put on the shelves of books you've already read in proper alphabetical order!" I squeaked as the books.
"Yes," I agreed in my normal voice. "We do all like to alphabetize things, don't we?"
"Will you bring us home some friends when you go to the booksale again on Sunday?" I squealed.
"I sure will, and they can be alphabetized in among the rest of you," I promised.
"There's no more room on this shelf," I complained from the Trollope, but I ignored me.
I wandered back into the living room and turned on the laptop. "Hey!" I squeaked in my book voice. "What are you doing with that thing? You have to start reading us! Turn off your computer! You promised to read us!"
I think it was somewhere around this time that the Lad left.
Posted by didofoot at 10:53 AM | Comments (4)
September 27, 2006
From humble beginnings we built our empire
Today is our fourth anniversary, rather arbitrarily calculated at this point but better than nothing.
In celebration of this, we're going to sundae ourselves into food comas tonight at Fenton's, which was the site of our very first date -- except it was a different Fenton's, which was possibly a Leatherby's at the time, and it was our first-first date, not our most recent first date. Still, there is important symbolism here somewhere, even if you have to dig into the couch cushions of my brain to find it.
That first date, when we were 14 and 15 respectively, was exciting in lots of ways. The Lad, upon discovering how uncomfortable I was eating around others, refused to order anything and instead insisted on staring at me while I ate. It was around this time I thought "this might be someone I'd enjoy being mildly abused by for the rest of my life." After the ice cream, we saw Guarding Tess in the Dome, then had our first kiss just outside. ("I'm going to hug you now," I explained, moving in for the kill, "so that I don't have to hug you while my mom is here," a line I have used with varying success throughout my dating career.)
In conclusion I'd like to present you with a quote from Guarding Tess that I feel sums up much of our past years of relationship drama, if you substite "the Lad" for "Tess" and "Didofoot" for "the President."
Tess: The President is coming [...]. Will you have the cars and the machine guns ready in about an hour?
Let us take a moment to reflect not on the miracle of our love, but on the miracle of an internet that will provide us with quotes even from a movie as shitty as this one.
Posted by didofoot at 11:37 AM | Comments (6)
September 26, 2006
With what shall I mend it, dear Liza, dear Liza?
Purely by accident I stumbled across Robertson Davies, and then across this:
"Oh, this Christianity! Even when people swear they don't believe in it, the fifteen hundred years of Christianity that has made our world is in their bones, and they want to show they can be Christians without Christ. Those are the worst; they have the cruelty of doctrine without the poetic grace of myth."
-Robertson Davies, Fifth Business
When I first registered to vote, I registered as an independent. I don't remember if I was leaning towards Green or Libertarianism or what, but at any rate I had some clear idea of what I wanted and I was equally certain that I didn't support the Democrats. The strain of this nearly killed my poor mother. I clearly wasn't a Republican, we all knew that much. To register as anything remotely liberal was, to her thinking at the time, to register as a sort of lapsed Democrat -- so why take support away from the Democrats in favor of a weak imitation? To me, of course, it looked different: the Green Party provides things that neither Republicans or Democrats offer, and that's what I wanted. I wasn't just going to hop the first party train that traveled to the same part of the country I wanted to go, not when I knew the exact name of the town I wanted to visit.
I am often confronted with the religious equivalent of that. There seems to be a general opinion that to be aetheist in America is to be a lapsed Christian. I usually hear this from Christians, Davies being a notable example. It's funny to me that these Christians seem to feel a belief in Christ is a negligable part of their religion: I've got a moral code more or less aligned with theirs and I live in the right part of the world for it, so I must esentially be one of them. After all, aetheism is a lack, not a presence, right? So I obviously have a hole in my soul-bucket where religion should go.
The truth, of course, is that it's a belief in something different, not a non-belief -- I'm aetheist, not agnostic, and not a faded version of a Christian. There are those who don't like it, just as there are those (crazy people) who don't like my eyebrows or my giant crooked feet, but it's an unchangeable feature of me that Robertson Davies and everyone else is just going to have to accept.
Bones, schmones. There's no hole in my bucket.
Posted by didofoot at 02:20 PM | Comments (7)
September 22, 2006
Nickels and Hair
The Lad and I recently visited Katy at Farm Camp.
I still remember the day I met Katy. I was four and she was five. She was sitting on a bench at recess and she had hair down to her waist. I -- kept in enforced moppet-cuts by the Moms, who refused to deal with the tangles that ensued otherwise -- was pretty sure my life would be complete if I had hair to my waist. I sat down next to her and started telling riddles.
Twenty-two years passed. Our friendship is now old enough to legally drink at bars, then drive itself to the polling place and vote for president. In two more years our friendship will be able to rent a car without paying extra fees.
The proper gift for a 21st anniversary is nickel; I'd say that's about what your ring is worth. Happy anniversary, Vigilante. Here's to twenty-two more years.
Posted by didofoot at 06:37 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2006
My accidental internet famousness
Sean pointed this out a few days ago.
Look, I'm not saying I am Jared Leto and I'm not saying I'm not, but I will say this: isn't it sort of weird how you never see us in the same room at the same time?
Hey, Jared, take off your glasses for a second...
Posted by didofoot at 08:33 AM
September 13, 2006
The city with the largest homeless
San Francisco, the city with the largest homeless and activist populations in the world (probably) is a tough place to walk down the street in. Every sidewalk in my neighborhood is lined with people asking me for things.
I don't give money to the homeless. Not on any kind of principle, but because I live on someone else's dime, so it seems sort of counter-productive to be giving my not-very-hard-earned money away. Still, if you swing it right you can make your lack of donation feel like kind of a virtue. You can think to yourself "Hey, if I didn't give money to the woman with the open sores on her feet last week, am I really going to give it to you, who has clearly showered at least once in the past five days? I don't think so." There's a lovely smugness there that you can ride on when you pass the open-sores lady again three blocks down.
It's the activists that really drive home my bad-person-ness, because they ask for so little and want to give so much in return.
"Hey, do you have five minutes to spare to help the environment?" Not just the trees or the oceans or the air quality; no, the whole environment would be helped if I donated my five minutes. Still, I have a busy day ahead of me, jobs to apply for and spider solitaire to play, so I can't stop to chat.
And then they up the ante, ask for less and offer more. "Do you have a minute to support gay rights? Half a minute to increase literacy worldwide? Excuse me, do you have one second to prevent the certain death of thousands of very cute puppies?"
And I have to say "You know, I was really hoping to squeeze this into my schedule but as it turns out I just can not."
Posted by didofoot at 10:05 AM
September 12, 2006
Several hedgehogs, some nuns
About two years ago we moved into this love palace. I remember what I was thinking when the photo below was taken, and mostly what I was thinking was "oh, shit." There were too many rooms. There were too many pieces of furniture, but also not enough. Whose sheets would we use? Would I ever be able to consume a pint of ice cream in a sitting now that there was someone around to disapprove? And what if I accidentally, you know, got fed up with him and killed him in his sleep? In that case, should I give in and put his sheets on the bed?
Several hedgehogs, some nuns, Robert Herrick, a haunting and a few stalks later, we are still not dead in our sleep (on his goddamn flannel sheets). In fact, I'm happy here. It worries me. I look around my lovely living room and I think "oh, shit." Am I supposed to be this settled while still in my twenties? Should we move to Paris? Should we give away some of this stuff? What if he accidentally, you know, gets fed up with me and stops paying for all my BART tickets?
In a letter to KTV some years ago, I said "When there's nowhere different to go, have the sense to stay put." Good advice, me. So here we are, here we are, here we are, and I am trying to mind but somehow I just cannot.
Posted by didofoot at 09:27 AM
September 11, 2006
Saving Nine
For about ten years now I've been saving every postcard I received, which, due to my friendship with Michele, means I have quite a collection. A little while ago I decided to put them to use and decorated the bathroom and parts of the living room with various scenes from around the world.
I'm thinking these blog entries might also prove useful one day, even though now they seem supremely not. Eventually -- after, say, ten years of this -- I will probably have written out my reactions to and thoughts about almost everything there is. I figure this will save me a lot of time in correspondence. I can just cut and paste the appropriate entry and hit "send."
I once had a job working for NBC.com during the Olympics where I did a similar thing. People would write in with their concerns about the Olympics coverage and I would send back the appropriate pre-written response. Not having to write my own responses left me about 7.5 hours of my 8-hour shift to sit outside on the lawn with Jade and Michael Justin, smoking cloves and watching the deer have dinner. I'm not sure what my pre-scripted blog responses will free me up to do, but I'm guessing spider solitaire will play a large part.
Posted by didofoot at 12:03 PM
