Squid Pro Quo

is it a hippie? a comunist dressed as a drag queen?

...or a washrag queen.  Probably a speed freak or a pothead or a muffin queen.  Look at her it's just a whore.  Or maybe a gold digger or a hustler.  Some sort of intellectual.  Probably a rimmer.  Probably a speed freak or a chicken queen.  Or a shrimp freak!  But it could be a narc...or maybe a beatnik?  or a junkie.  an acidhead.  Is she a babe?  or just a gigolo.  She's just a flower child.  Yeah a shit kicker.  Or a red.  Or a glamour girl.   Or maybe she's from Vietnam.  Or a Pollack.  Or a war monger.  Or an S&M queen.  Oh it's just a teenager.  Yeah maybe it's one of those hell's angels.  Do you think it's a baby butch?  It could be a fag hag or maybe a B-girl.  A jock or a closet queen.  A hair hopper.  Or maybe a movie star.  Well she's a drop out of some sort.  What is that word?  A dingleberry!  Or a draft dodger or maybe just a runaway.  Or some sort of, you know, peacenik.  Yeah or a hooker!  Or she's one of those yippies... mmm maybe one of them jetsetters.  I bet it's just a whore.  A dinge queen.  a rimmer.  A size queen and a hustler.  Oh she makes me sick.  Isn't it disgusting?

John Waters superfans will recognize that as basically the only dialog in the unreleased early movie Mondo Trasho.  I hadn't thought about how much I love it in a while until just a moment ago when I looked down and realized that "I'm just one of those Yippies..." Look at this shit:

 

KOMBUCHA, bitches.  I'm drinking it.  Whitney, I know you are reading this and it's completely your fault.  (BTW the paper on the coffee table is from me betting the ex after like two bottles of wine that I could name all 50 states WITH capitals faster than he could name 50 states.  I know i was tipsy because of the serial killer handwriting.  I like how after Delaware I have Trent Wilmington DOVER)

Anyways, when I moved to San Francisco from Chicago I was 23, a binge drinker.  I had mindlessly and apathetically voted once (republican) and I believed that everyone had the god given right to smoke cigarettes in bars.  I'd never eaten Indian food.  I didn't really exercise and I believed such activities belong in a fancy gym.  I hated anything that reminded me of nature and believed that parks should be turned into housing developments and that every blade of grass in this nation should be covered with cement.  I was concerned with becoming a hippie.  

That hasn't happened...yet.  But I don't know if it's aging or this city or a combination of both. 

Here are some ways I've ventured dangerously into yippie territory (yuppy + hippie = yippie)that are relatively recent.

• When trying to decide what to cook for dinner, Brandon and I have had long conversations about which fish are most sustainable.
• I compost
• I recycle religiously
• I've verbally berated my parents into recycling
• I've verbally berated my parents into supporting gay marriage
• I'm concerned about my diet coke problem whereas before the words "diet coke problem" referred only to not having any
• While enjoying the loud horn of plenty that we blow here at home I still might tell people I'm Canadian while overseas
• My dog eats fancy organic dog food and actually went on a hunger strike when I presented him with a mainstream brand
• I do not believe in indoor smoking or really smoking in general (DAY 7 smoke-free!)
• eating at certain restaurants fills me with anxiety because I don't know what's in it or where it comes from
• I go hiking sometimes and I sort of like it
• I hang out at parks
• I'm concerned about how local and how seasonal food is
• Weekly farmers market trips
• The Hurt Locker got me really riled up and irritated with the US
• I fear high fructose corn syrup like its cyanide
• Riding around with two girlfriends this weekend we lamented about not being able to eat tilapia because we heard they feed them corn
• Legalize it!
• 4 dollar bottles of Kombucha and finding myself saying things like, "Suck it, Food and Drug Administration"

Most of those were food related.  Food and politics tends to be what being a yippie is all about.  Spending lots of time, energy, thought, and money meeting your own basic needs while watching documentaries about North Korean human rights violations on your MacBook.  

Here are some cell phone photos from the weekend.  A friend from Nashville came to visit, I spent some time in Oakland and apologized to the entire city for hating on it so hard in the past and got a little too drunk watching the Oscars only to be filled with deep regret for drinking at all.  

 

Fillmore Farmer's Market

 

Western Addition

 

Lake Merritt, Oakland

 

Lake Merritt

Lake Merritt

 

Oakland

vice squad

Sanctimonious self denial is so thought consuming to oneself and so uninteresting to others.  If you meet someone withdrawing from a serious-ass meth habit; it's ALL they'll talk about.  It's surprisingly boring.

Now I am not attempting anything as huge as going cold turkey from amphetamines (Don't Mess with Meth, Seth!) nor am I going full monty with quitting anything entirely but I am making conscious efforts to rcut backfrom the Leslie trifecta:  cigarettes, diet coke, marijuana.  The three kings. 

Never attempt this all at once.  It's not going well.  Well not smoking pot is pretty easy its just boring.  This is San Francisco and it's EVERYWHERE, but that may be more the company I keep.  I am tired of being stoned and then getting really nervous thinking "OH MY GOD I'M UNEMPLOYED AND I'M GOING TO DIE IN A CAR ACCIDENT AND EVERYONE WILL LAUGH"  

Cigarettes are also shockingly easy to forgo. I've never smoked more than one to two a day in my life and as time goes on I am more and more over it altogether.  I already will go days without smoking simply because I forgot and I'm not around other smokers.

It's the diet coke that is the hard one.  Really hard.  I noticed a horrible pattern of shady behavior with my diet coke consumption.  I have three corner stores each within a block of my apartment and I deliberately stagger where I purchase diet coke lest I be judged for my frequent runs.  Why do I care what the Armenian man who wanted to take me in the backroom and drink "real" absinthe thinks?  I hide empty cans and then take out the recycling when my roommates aren't around so they can't see the pile of empties in the bin.  I refer to diet coke as my mistress and the first burning sip as a kiss.  I become enraged when stores don't carry aluminum cans.  I simply can't deal with plastic bottles.  I CAN'T AND I WON'T.  This isn't communist China.  I'll take my diet coke dollars elsewhere.  That's called a FREE MARKET, bitches.

I didn't have a single diet coke yesterday and today it all just fell apart.  I'm presently on my third of the day and I'd probably kick you right in the huevos if you tried to take it out of my hands.  I've got to get this monkey off my back.

Alcohol has been pretty much dead to me for a while.  I will consume (responsibly!) about once a week but really I don't feel like it anymore.  It affects me the next day and I CANNOT go running with a hangover.  Running is the only thing I do where I don't feel chest-tighteningly freaked out about unemployment, car accidents, earthquakes, North Korean nukes, blood clots, and radiation poisoning.  Not feeling like you are going to be struck down by god and nature is the only high worth chasing.

sock sock shoe shoe

Since the beginning of my memories my father and I have been having the sock/shoe debate.  Is it better to put on both socks and then both shoes, or a sock and the shoe then repeat on the other foot? I have always firmly been of the mind that you MUST put both socks on before shoes enter into the equation.  Otherwise there is this fleeting moment in time where one foot has both a sock and a shoe and the other is bare.  What if there is an earthquake or a fire?  You'd look eff-ing ridiculous.  My father disagrees thinking that you deal with one foot completely and then it's done.  Parents aren't always right.  I will remember this debate for the rest of my life as something so completely Dad much like, "it's like a cockroach on a porch....running smooth", "be a locomotive not a caboose" and "The Yankees are a god damn evil empire".

In other news I spotted this truck on Haight Street yesterday:

 

Sailor Jerry's rum is inexplicably the only alcohol my big gay roommate Kris will really drink.  He invented a drink made with it called Sailor Jerry's Load.  I was excited to inform him a new shipment had arrived

This is how I've been feeling as of late:

that is all.

aerial skiing

Everyone drop everything that you are doing and watch this video.  This is Ryan St. Onge, aerial skier and resident Mormon-face.

Now I don't believe in skiing.  Never have.  It's a lot of foreplay for something that will end up killing you Kennedy-style.  White people sure can create activities out of mother nature and then make them SUPER expensive and inaccessible.  I can't even begin to imagine the lifetime cost of sending a skier to the Olympics.  I think all the training left little time to develop social skills because every athlete interviewed talks to the reporter like there is a language barrier when they are Americans. 

Despite the urge to be bah humbug about the Olympics, I've been really into it.  My roommate and I take turns cross country skiing down our long hallway in our socks.  Ive even worked up a few tricks where I climb up the wall and jump off.  

So yes, I'm softening to organized athletics and feats of strength.  Only slightly.  I still hate the shirtless running group of men at Kezar Stadium.  I know you're thinking, who hates shirtless men running?  I do.  I mean haven't these people heard of a little thing called SKIN CANCER?  Do they have any idea how much effort I put into avoiding the sun?  I bet I haven't left the house without sun screen on in ten years and I look like I'm about 15, bitches.  And I'm going to look 15 until I'm 50.  Weren't they raised with any degree of body shame and self loathing like the rest of the Americans?  GET OFF MY LAWN!

watch that video.

This pop-up ad just caught my attention. If I'm going to have a lucrative career, I better start stretching now...

I'm partial to "accountant"

garble

Hey bitches,

Thanks for the extra bitchy comments and emails about not living up to my promise to post more.  Luckily, I respond to threats and insults more than flattery.  I also have a good excuse for this past week.  I was almost snuffed out by the sinus infection of a lifetime.  I was in bed for about four days straight realizing that I can't ever get sick for real because I simply can't handle it.  I was a huge baby telling anyone who would listen that I was facing certain death and began divvying out my many treasures.  I want to be buried with my bingo ball which happened to be a  source of contention in my last relationship.  I just hope the next man who loves me also loves the ball. (a joke here is too easy...let's just keep things moving along)

(side note:  I just went through my entire flickr account trying to find a picture of the bingo ball and I couldn't find one.

But I did stumbled across this picture and it made me laugh hysterically.  The art direction of this photo went like this, "Pretend you're Angelina and Brad and the cat is a baby you stole from Southeast Asia and you're going to sell these photos to People Magazine!"

In other news here are some things I've been having nightmares about:

1) Being buried under rubble

2) Being a waitress at a fancy restaurant with ZERO training and people ordering off the menu things like "clown salad" 

3) Car accidents

There has been a lot of talk around San Francisco since the Haiti earthquake about how "we're next". Spoken like a city who has already been destroyed once. This is supposed to be incentive to build good karma by doing allegedly helpful things like sending piles of used yoga mats that will be used as makeshift beds.

As a naturally terrified person, I don't appreciate the casual earthquake humor.  It is ingrained in people who have been here much longer than me and I doubt I'll ever assimilate that far.  When I first moved here I was walking the dog and a man stops and addresses the dog and says, "Hey Little One!  What are you going to do when the Big One hits."  I was incredulous.  "Sir, why are you telling this to my dog...and me?"  

Speaking of cultural quirks of San Franciscans, has anyone experienced how people don't say "husband" and "wife" as often as other places?  Back when my ex and I were together I had many people refer to him as my "partner".  I hear it a lot when referring to married straight people.  It's interesting because I recall straight married people HATING it.  After the Prop 8 debacle there was an attempted movement to stop acknowledging marriage at all and only use words like, "life partner" when referring to someone's husband or wife.  I think the movement was misguided and not at all helpful getting conservative Christians on our side, but the fact that it offended the straight marrieds should say a lot.  Everyone wants to be recognized as what they are.  

I'm all over the place today, stream of consciousness.  Don't expect me to proof this garbage.

OH YEAH!  I started running on an actual track in Golden Gate Park.  I'm not entirely certain I'm allowed to do this but I have been.  It's probably why my knees and hips hurt ALL THE TIME.  I'll deal with that later.  Today I was thinking about how I once heard/read the bit of trivia that while humans are far from the fastest animal we an run the furthest and for the longest amount of time.  Awesome.  I can't think of any evolutionary advantage this gives us other than looking like total assholes.

Now that I run all the time I spend way too much time in my sporty spice outfits.  This deeply disturbs me.  I have always been very irritated with athletic people.  Possibly because I've dated not one, not two, but THREE men who I am certain have manorexia with a side of compulsive exercise and a dash of boylimia.  I'm in this because I'm vain and I don't want to die.   The only fun exercise is tennis.  It's a fact.  I've done the research.

Okay I have no more uninteresting news.  For those of you who aren't friends with me on facebook, you may have missed the tower of shellfish that Brandon and I prepared completely on a whim after I realized I have a crush on Anthony Bourdain.  It started with a rumble:

But Professor Crab and Colonel Lobster didn't realize that neither would be the victor. 

Their fate:

all americans

In the most recent New Yorker there is a nice tribute to the late J.D. Salinger.  I did, however, take issue with this quote:

"In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader and condition: 'Huckleberry Finn,' 'The Great Gatsby,' and 'The Catcher in the Rye'.  Of the three, only 'Catcher' defines an entire region of human experience: it is- in French and Dutch as much as in English- the handbook of the adolescent heart."

Having read all three of the aforementioned books, the latter two twice each, I see a glaring problem with this statement.  Every reader and condition?  Really?  I can see how that may seem.  I'd hate to wrap up American literature in those three "perfect" books in which a fairly large group of people are starkly underrepresented.  Not every group of people has to be a part of every story but come on...those three books are so....what's the word I'm looking for...

Well I'm sure this certain group of people will have their experiences better represented in perfect American fiction just as soon as they are done shopping, having babies, and learn to read something other than Cosmo and Twilight. 

Time to go for a run.  I'm going to try to remember that I'm not the only clown in this rodeo, and hopefully others will follow when throwing around superlatives about the American experience. 

I've been congratulating myself recently on being less predictable than usual. I am in the middle of cleaning out my closet and I've begun to see a pattern.

Three guesses: what color(s) is my underwear right now?

required reading

I could read wikipedia all day long.  Is there a job I could get that would allow me to do that?  I think I would really excel. 

For a while, I've kept a bookmark folder of most (but not all) of the interesting articles I've read on wikipedia.  I'm not sure why I've done this as I have never once returned to the folder...until this morning.  Oh man.  It's a goldmine.  A mine full of gold. 

It would be CRIMINAL of me to keep this collection of links to myself.  So get ready to not get any work done today because you're about to take a dip in the magical pool of wikipedia

• Culture-Bound Syndrome- diseases and other maladies invented and isolated to certain cultures.  I'm most concerned with Ghost Sickness (American Indian) and Brain Fag (West Africa).  I kind of think restless leg syndrome is an American version of this, but I'm sure I'll be hearing from them via email telling me I'm wrong.  I do know lots of brainy fags though. 
• Casu Marzu- A Sardinian cheese made with live maggots.
• 1700-1750 in fashion-  Don't know why, just thought this was interesting
• Sailing Stones- hugeass rocks that move on their own/magic/some natural explanation
• Bonsai Kitten- internet hoax
• 2007 Boston Bomb Scare- on the moon, nerds get their pants pulled down and they are spanked with moon rocks.
• Meta-Joke- jokes about jokes
• Cluster ballooning
• Avant-garde
• List of Fatal Bear Attacks in North America
• From Hell- a letter written by a man claiming to be Jack the Ripper
• List of books banned by governments
• Paper and Pencil Game
• Bloop- underwater sound recorded and thought to be made by a sea monster
• Placebo button- I knew those close door buttons on elevators were really just giving me the finger
• The Human Condition- a painting by Rene Magritte
• Kastenlauf- european drinking game
• Dandy- a gallant man who places importance on physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies
• Needle Ice- subterranean moisture brought to the surface via capillary action
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights- thou shalt not waterboard?
• Satanic Ritual Abuse
• Conversation Theory- how we talk to each other
• Wolfe +585, Senior- the man with the longest personal name ever
• Santorum- filthy redefinition of everyone's favorite republican former senator
• Double Entendre
• Nannie Doss- female serial killer
• Island of California
• Coso Artifact- spark plug found encased in a 500 thousand year old mineral.  Maybe Creationism is accurate?
• Hòa thượng Thích Quảng Đức- self immolating Vietnamese Buddhist monk
• Fainting goat- these guys are awesome
• Object sexuality- attraction towards inanimate objects
• Prisoner's dilemma- part of game theory
• Museum of Bad Art
• Robert Mugabe
• Kilroy was here
  
• Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft- legal dispute between microsoft and a high school student
• Alien Abduction Insurance- is there a public option?
• Love dart- in short, it's a snail penis
• Axon- are you cognizant of every synapse?
• Incidents at Six flags parks
• Franz Reichelt- died jumping off the Eiffel Tower in a homemade parachute suit
• Mass hysteria
• Shugborough Inscription- real life Da Vinci Code.  It's mystery time!
• The Spins- vom dot com
• Missing White Woman Syndrome-  I can't wait for this to work in my favor someday.  Not blond though...
• Jon Stewart's 2009 criticism of CNBC- yup there is a wikipedia page for this high school drama
• Snow White and the Madness of Truth- Swedish installation art
• Human vestigiality- parts of our bodies we've evolved beyond like the appendix and wisdom teeth.  forget what i said about Creationism above.  I'm back on Team Monkey.
• Dante's Divine Comedy- the wikipedia page is much easier to read than the actual text
• Green Man/Charlie No-Face- western Pennsylvania urban legend
• Montauk monster
• Abolitionism (bioethics)
• Postdiction
• List of Inventors killed by their own inventions
• Continuous Partial Attention
• List of collective nouns- these are so strange.  a parliament of owls.
• Vassilis Paleokostas- escaped from prison twice
• One Red Paperclip- how a man made a series of trades and went from a red paperclip to a house
• Frank Abagnale- the Catch Me If You Can man
• Dancing Plague of 1518- catch it!
• Andy Warhol
• Josef Fritzl- kept his daughter captive in the basement for 24 years
• Michael Malloy- you can't kill him
• Nils Olav- a knighted penguin
• The World Famous Bushman- found at Fisherman's Wharf
• Psychological pricing
• Freedom Tunnel- under Riverside Park in Manhattan
• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

You're welcome.