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reader, writer, unregenerate comma-splicer |
“I don’t think we can give blood today,” Gene said.
“Why not?” I said.
“There isn’t actually a Red Cross blood bank in San Francisco.”
“What about Blood Centers of the Pacific?” He made kind of a face. “Is the Red Cross better?” I asked.
“I don’t know if it’s better. I’ve just been giving blood to the Red Cross my whole life.”
“You have a brand loyalty,” I marveled. “You have brand loyalty to your blood bank.”
“Well, it’s my blood,” he said, uncomfortable.
“I am blogging about this,” I said.
Gene and I went to the Albany Bulb on Sunday, seeking to escape the relentless techno and cheesy announcer at the Castro Street Fair.
The Bulb, if you do not know, is a former landfill for construction equipment. Once it stopped being used, people began making art from the scraps. Now you can go wander around these lovely waterfront paths where you will occasionally be confronted by odd graffiti or a sculpture made from rebar.
It’s a funny thing, to be forced out of the house a few times a year. We skip town during the Street Fair, Pride and Halloween. It’s a nuisance, but I think the neighborhood makes up for it the rest of the year, because absolutely everything is in walking distance: grocery stores, bookstores, gourmet coffee, comics, bars, Swedish Americans. The other day, Gene and I were debating what to do with the stack of electronics we’re planning to jettison, and Gene said “If only there was a store like that one in The 40 Year Old Virgin, where they sell your stuff on EBay.”
“There is,” I said. “It’s on 18th, just past Delano’s Market.”
See? Everything.
Anyway, it’s scarcely a hardship at all to be forced out into the world, when the world contains things like the Albany Bulb.
People who like to come to my neighborhood without actually seeing me (and you know who you are, and I know who you are) should swing by the Castro Street Fair on Sunday.
Why?
(I hope there will be management parables.)
I’m enjoying the World of Wonderment website, not least because one of the blurbs on the site promises “to create whimsical memories for you are your loved ones.” I think it was supposed to be “for you OR your loved ones,” but I like it this way.
In spite of the enormous “CAKE WALK” on the site, I don’t think there will be an actual cake walk at the street fair. Sad. There is nothing better than a cake walk. For very minimal public humiliation, you walk away with an entire cake. It’s hard to imagine what could beat that. I mean, an oral sex walk would be much more difficult to share with friends, and a stack-o-cash walk might be in trouble if the wind picked up.
Hm, I wonder if we can work a cake walk into our wedding? I wonder if this is the best idea I have ever had?
Buying your smokes in SF is going to cost you an extra 20 cents per pack, starting today. Why the price hike? So the city can use the money to clean up the cigarette butts you folks drop all over town.
I get the rationale — we need extra cash, and right now it’s popular and correct to beat up smokers whenever your city needs lunch money. And the streets are, indeed, dirty (except not so much in my neighborhood, because the local merchants pay to have the streets privately cleaned, bless ’em). But are cigarette butts really the big trash offenders? Shouldn’t we be taxing dog owners, because the streets are covered in dog mess? Or people who buy coffee in to-go cups, because you see a lot of those on the ground. Or, my god, how about every club in town, because if I’ve seen one club flyer in the gutter I’ve seen a thousand.
It’s not that I’m against picking on smokers. I like picking on people. But why stop there, you know? Let’s pick on all the groups I don’t belong to. I have a list waiting, for when the Mayor calls.
Five hundred business cards and no business.
My dog paper went under. No more job for Kris.
A moment of silence for all the dog news I will no longer be bringing you.
Sigh.
After seven years in this seven-by-seven, I have at last visited the Folsom Street Fair.
Meh.
I was promised public masturbation, sexy leather daddies and deviance, but more than half the people there were just ordinary, boring tourists like me. Who let all these other tourists in, I’d like to know? What with me and all my fellow looky-loos cluttering it up, the place was over-crowded and I have that thing about crowds. I’m glad I’ve gone once but I won’t go back.
On the other hand I bet the other, less famous leather events scheduled throughout the year are much more exciting. Has anyone been to Up Your Alley, Bay of Pigs or Magnitude? Are they fun? Should I buy a leather bra and get into trouble?
Have you ever watched a dog wake out of a dream? She simply wakes up. She can be deep in the throes of a real zinger, yelping under her breath, twitching her paws, and yet when you put a hand on her she calmly opens her eyes and is never surprised to find herself lying on the floor. There isn’t even a split second of confusion in the transition from dream to waking. This is one of my favorite things about dogs.
In honor of the Market Street snowflakes, here are some lines from Christmas carols which I believe should be used in horror film previews. (This list works best if you read it in that scary deep announcer voice.)
– he sees you when you’re sleeping
– do you hear what I hear?
– sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
– no ear may hear his coming
– with their eyes all aglow
– it doesn’t show signs of stopping
– draw nigh with lowly fear
– he came to life
– I’ll be back again some day
– jump in bed, cover up your head
– it came upon a midnight clear
Once you get started with these, you find that just about any line from a Christmas carol can sound like a horror film tagline if you say it menacingly enough. Have a holly, jolly Christmas… Weird, right? I’m going to have a lot of fun caroling this year.
I saw a woman in a burqa the other day, just her eyes peering out.
Of course, she may also have been a badass ninja on her way to a fancy party.
Now that would be a mighty unsettling thing to see around one’s city all the time, wouldn’t it? To be constantly walking down the street and having to ask yourself: Citizen or ninja? Citizen? Or ninja?
I guess you get used to it.
Our mailman is kind of the Easter Bunny of mail. There’s a short search I undertake daily for our mail: some of it goes in our locked mailbox, sure, but some can also be found in a large stack of mail that inexplicably gets left on the table in the lobby. This stack does not just consist of our mail: it’s a stack for the whole building, so every day, if there is anything on the table at all, you need to look through everything to see if you’ve got stuff in there. Mail is also left on the floor just outside our apartment door, and on one memorable occasion I found one of my underwear catalogs outside on the front porch.
I have yet to work out the method that the mail bunny uses to decide which mail goes in the box and which goes on the lobby table. He will cheerfully stuff the large, fragile envelopes in which Allegra mails Gene her gorgeous collages right into the tiny box, but similarly sized catalogs get laid carefully on the table. Postcards usually go in the box, but now and then I find a few on the table. Maybe these are the ones that the mail bunny thought were too good to be kept for just the recipient to enjoy.
I know that traditionally the mythological creatures who deliver stuff in your absence need to be placated with gifts. (Santa, the Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, brownies, etc.) It has occurred to me that maybe my mail bunny screws with our mail every day because I never leave him any presents, so now I’m just brainstorming stuff I can put out. Right now I’m wavering between a bucket of water suspended over the door or a smattering of loose marbles on the steps.
This is not my mythological creature.