monkey trivia

I learned today from a tech who works with primates in a research lab that certain monkeys produce grey semen that dries into a solid mass minutes after it is ejaculated. He said that this is an adaptation that improves the odds of a male passing his seed along to a female, who may be mating with several different males on a given day, by blocking the path to the fallopian tubes for subsequent ejaculate ("closing the door," as it were). This tech said he knows this first hand because monkeys enjoy masturbating and he often finds little grey blobs on the floors of their cages.

I remember heading gleefully

down the slippery slope of labor intensive gardening. The second year at the farm I decided I was going to start seeds indoors in February so I could get my tomatoes, peppers, etc. producing early. So I set flats up in our attic on big sheets of plywood propped up by saw horses (god I miss those saw horses!), beneath fluorescent lights I strung from the ceiling so that they hung 18 inches above the "potting soil," which was actually loam from our compost pile that I had taken to work and sterilized by autoclaving (pretty extreme DIY, huh?) The highlight of my day for a while was coming home from work to check on the progress of my little seedlings and giving them a gentle misting. I even went so far as to brush them with my hand a couple times a day once they started reaching up toward the light because I had read somewhere that giving seedlings physical stimuli resulted in more robust growth. In the end we
had so many little tomato plants that we ran out of people to give them away to.

more giant punkins!

At a recent Pumpkin festival they were selling seeds to grow giant pumpkins. The seeds cost $2.00 a piece. They come in a tiny plastic bag, with a pedigree (my seed came from a 712 lb pumpkin belonging to one Aaron Wray.) I thought the price of one seed was bad, until I read the instructions that came with it, which include requirements for extensive soil additives, peat moss, plant fertilizers with non-standard N-P-K ratios, a warming tray, a mini greenhouse, and finally a 6' by 6' shelter with sloped roof for your pumpkin. Yes, you have to build a little house for your pumpkin. Once the pumpkins start to develop, you're supposed to pick the best looking one, and prune the rest, pinning all your hopes on that guy. However, giant pumpkins frequently explode, so all your hard work may be for naught. What are the physics behind exploding giant pumpkins? Internal fermentaion? I don't think it's a build up of gases. A potential champion pumpkin in log phase can put on 15 -30 lbs a day, and I guess if they grow unevenly, turgor forces build up in their guts and any thin or weak wall sections may be compromised. Good pumpkin quote from a giant pumpkin ace: "If you're not splitting them, you're not trying hard enough. You're not pushing them enough. If you're not blowing some up, you're not doing it right. They'll never be big."
Yes, but are exquisitely nurtured hothouse pumpkins are more likely to warrant a visit from the Great Pumpkin? Has anyone ever been injured in an exploding pumpkin mishap?

re: the multi-person blog

the blog question: is it better to demand give-and-take, withholding blog until someone else gives it up, not unlike a resentful lover? or should one blog unconditionally, not caring whether the act is returned in kind, simply as a declaration of one's truth? should one make it a a habit, diary-like, to blog once a day out of a sense of
discpline? or should one blog only when one has something significant to relate?

think of them as giant ovaries

Giant veggies are big everywhere that gardening is big. One often forgets that gardening ranks as the #1 hobby worldwide when such polls are taken-- I think because gardening enthusiasts are generally quiet and introspective and rarely go on shooting rampages. Growing monstrous vegetables is kinda the horticulturist's version of getting wild and crazy. Mainly, though, giant veggies are hideous symbols of the triumph of petrochemical fertilizers. One day our descendents will look back and think us mad for such arrogant waste. But for now, golly gee, aren't those gargantuan pumpkins freakish?

please just

'splain me this: my smoke detector started making that intermittent chirp that is supposed to let you know that your battery needs to be changed. So I get up on a chair and take it off it's mount (no, it's not one of those kind that are wired into the house circuit). I look into the little compartment where you hook in the 9-volt battery (is there anything other than smoke detectors these days that uses 9-volt batteries?) and I see that there is no battery! I mean, the black padded connector with the silver caps that snap on to the two poles of the battery is just dangling there. I mean, I don't care if it's illegal. There are smoke detectors in the building hallways that are wired in to the building power that are plenty loud (trust me, I set one off). To me, smoke detectors are like the body politic mandating that you keep radioisotopes in your home against your will. They are basically one more instance of society coddling smokers, because, let's face it, irresponsible smoking causes more fires than anything else (and those incompetent electricians that are responsible for the faulty wiring that sets off some building fires? Most of 'em are smokers, too, I'd wager). So fuck, I'll just put the damn thing in a drawer until I move. But just tell me where it's getting the power to make these noises? Does it mean radioactive dust is escaping into my home? Just curious.

running with the wolves

i feed myself
i pay the rent
i keep the peace
i'm like the treaty of ghent
and when the alien anthropologist asked me
what the greatest invenions of mankind were
i answered without hesitation
the iPod and the mountain bike
there's a neolithic drama
going on every day in your girly brain
the gatherers are hunting now
and the hunters are insane
just as Lawrence of Arabia was a faggy moralist
who loved nothing more than to blow away turks
i read between the lines of the new age babbleogue:
to reinvent one's life means to run and fuck.

Buffyverse

I watched an entire episode of "Buffy" once. It was really quite good. Like "Xena," it doesn't take itself too seriously. But it seemed like one of those shows that you had to latch on to early in the game. Like "X-Files." I do know that "Buffy" has a complex mythology behind it, just like "X Files," I wouldn't even know how to start explaining that mess. I think that's part of what's appealing about reality shows like "Survivor--" no complex story line or cast of characters to keep track of, you can jump on (or off) at any time. If you go on to Wikipedia and look up "Buffy," you get a long article that explains (or at least tries to) the whole Buffy universe, or "Buffyverse." The concept of parallel universes that contain the underpinnings of reality that support a given fictional storyline is a concept long utilized in the comic book world, originally necessitated to reconcile contradictions in past stories of individual characters (e.g., the "Earth Prime," "Earth Two," etc. of DC Comics. This embarrassing trope eventually led to the concept of "cannon" in a fictional universe, where there is a rigid back story and ground rules to which all stories taking place in that universe must adhere. "Star Wars" is a good example, with a massive 30 year old cannon that has kept its spin-offs and merchandising narratively consistent throughout.

lovely benzene ring

I'm using copious amounts of Shoe Goo (original formula!) to reinforce my rapidy disintegrating though much beloved platform tie-dyed pseudo-converse all-stars. Even though I have the window open, the toluene fumes are filling my apartment with a delightful scent.

I'm not much for incense, but if they could invent a toluene-like scent that wasn't toxic to your liver, that would be huff-worthy!

what's wrong with me?

ok, so even this online friend I had recently gotten together with has stopped communicating with me. My e-mails were so fun and sensitive. I have her cell phone number, I could call her, but she's the sensitive, has-to-feel-comfortable-with-everything one. I give people as much space as they want. I just want to know this: do I scare or turn people off because I come off as too weird and dangerous and unstable, or because I seem too pure and honest and smart? Do I look too weird? Is it an aura thing? What's the deal?

Man, it's still fucking 3rd grade and I'm wondering why nobody wants to be my friend. I don't want to assault, belittle, or have sex with them. I just want to hang out and connect in a real way like humans are supposed to do. I'M SORRY WORLD THAT I'M SUCH A FUCKING MUTANT!

There! That felt better! Now I can go back to being the rock-solid person I normally am! (sarcasm alert)

in lieu of tubers

wow, stovetop stuffing instead of potatoes!
A gangrenous forearm instead of the rabies!
momma was too busy to make her own
pappa got mad and it ended with a firearm discharge
ten years later I'm sharing it in Readers Write.

stovetop stuffing tonight
'cause I'm running from Jean Valjean
I got some tupperware full of it in my knapsack
we'll sneak it into the Metreon.

instead of poptatoes, of course
we never have potatoes any more
Mr. Quayle don't allow 'em in this house
but they serve organic hand cuts at Mr. Gore's

stovetop tomorrow and forever, amen
I like to deliberately cut my hand
mix in my blood when I smoosh it with the water
when no one's watching; I don't think they'd understand

the Lord knows how much of myself I give to my famly
only he appreciates my sacrifice when I do this
just as He was so proud of his son at the last supper
these greasy bread crumbs are my eucharist.

more movie mumblings

Lawrence of Arabia-- well, it was one of the first movies filmed in CINEMASCOPE, it was Peter O'Toole's signature role, it was a huge cecil B Demille -esque production (they hired the Moroccan Army to play the Bedouin "army"), and the locations for the film (the Sahara Desrt) are as much a part of why it's spectacular as the drama. It's basically a biopic of T E Lawrence, British scholar turned soldier, who is considered one of the great adventurers of the 20th centuy. I remember reading Colin Wilson's book "The Outsiders" (you might remember him as the one who delighted millions with "The Mid Parasites") back in 1980 in which T E Lawrence figured prominently as a symbol of the lone genius defying convention to achieve greatness. "Lawrence" was made in 1962 and seems dated in many ways (such as Alec Guiness in dark makeup playing King Faisal) but was really an interesting story. My friend Marion says that Lawrence of Arabian is a good overview of the historic roots of the present day conflict in the mideast, and in a sense I agree.

the appeal of stovetop stuffing

was being able to say "stovetop stuffing... instead of potatoes?!!" in infinite variations while you were at the dinner table.

a full 1% of movies I see have LGBT themes

went to see a movie yesterday, it "came out" a coupla years ago, an Italian movie called "His Secret Life." Interesting note: the movie has subtitles, and at one point in the movie, two of the characters are speaking Turkish, so the movie subtitles their conversation in Italian, which was then subtitled in English, so it was a case of double-layered subtitles. The plot of the movie had to do with a woman whose husband is killed (in quite a shocking sequence) when he's hit by a car. From clues she discovers that her husband had a lover for 7 years, but it turns out the lover is a guy. Eventually she gets over her shock and disgust and befriends the man and his "family" that shares thgis flat with him. There's the matronlyt Turkish lesbian, a guy with AIDS, a couple more gay guys, and a transsexual. They are such a fun, loving pseudofamily, how could you not fall in love with them? In the end she grows out of her conventional attitudes from knowing them and sets off to find a new life. It was a good flick.

why don't we do it in the road?

while walking home from work on Fillmore a little while ago, aproaching Hayes Street, I observed a guy crouched in the middle of the street, apparently drawing something with a felt tipped marker. He was actually drawing on the street itself, or rather, on one of the yellow "dots," about a foot in diameter that have been painted on various points of various streets around the city in the past year by the public works department or maybe MUNI. I have no idea what they signify or mark, but have often thought they were tempting targets for artistic "enhancement." Curious, I walked over to the guy and said "hey, what are you doing?" I think he was taken aback at first, maybe thinking I was going to hassle him. So I hastily added "y'know, I've always wanted to turn one of these things into a big happy face, they're so annoying..." he smiled sheepishly and said "well, I was just waiting for the bus, and decided to do some doodling." I couldn't tell what he was drawing, but I said "well, keep up the good work!" anyway. as I walked away he said "thanks, have a great night!"

we saw some moronic play at the rhino then

afterward we cruised lower and upper haight for a place to eat. problem was we weren't sure what we were hankerin' for, and most of the alterna-dives were closed. at some point it dawned on me that haight street was like one long counterculture strip mall. finally we settled on a place called "all you knead" (yes, the names of all the restaurants are either arcane or plays on words), which one travel guide described as "the most authentically hippie of the eateries in haight-ashbury." I had veggie quesadilla and Win had a slice of pecan pie. he spent much of the meal elaborating on how the sconces in the restaurant resembled the ones in his mom's house.

That was part of a larger story that I was going to relate until I realized it was pointless.

stove top stuffing?

Instead of potatoes? way back in the 80 (which is the hipster way of saying "the 80's"), Caroline and I would occasionally have stove top stuffing (just add hot water, like making instant oatmeal!) as a main course. Those were simpler, lower roughage, times...

who the hell is God anyway?

i wear a construction/lumberjack in church;
and i don't really like it, but the effect seems to work...

- men w/o hats

more glamour science

global warming
black holes
ancestors of Homo sapiens
quantum physics
volcanoes
the physics of building implosions
carnivorous plants
images of sperm burrowing into eggs
separating siamese twins
spiders
and of course, dinosaurs with feathers

regret makes the world go 'round

Regret, so much regret, so much wasted effort. This is why people kill themselves: they can't pull something salvageable out of a life where things have gone terribly wrong again and again. In fact, there's not enough suicide going on. If this were ancient Rome, Ken Lay would have had to fall on his sword. Instead, people blame and sue and fly airliners into tall buildings.

and no, it wasn't an act of war, it was an act of zealotry. When will the world wise up and let the god-free take over?

no fear cavalier

I wasn't especially concerned about my gender for much of my childhood; I was more focused on extending the androgynous state I felt myself in as long as possible. Our family moved to a house sort of in the country when I was six, and I got a dog when I was eight, so I spent a lot of time roaming the woods and fields with my new best friend. This cemented my desire to live my adult life in the country, and probably didn't help my social skills very much. The pattern arose that when my family or unhappiness got too much to handle, I would set out for the woods. This pattern continues today, only now it's more likely to be the desert and on a mountain bike. It took almost four decades to get over gender. These days I feel like, "gender-- what's that?" But the older I get, the more I want to be outside. The fear of trying new things died much earlier than my preoccupation with gender. I've come full circle to that wide-eyed, androgynous state.

glamour science animals

alligators and sharks. They both have that "been around since the dinosaurs" cred. Sharks even more, they're from pre-dino time, have the "wide variety of shapes and sizes" angle working for 'em (cute little dogfish, menacing makos, giant lumbering filter-feeding whale sharks), they've got the "mysterious" thing (how long do great whites live? are sharks really immune from cancer?) Both have several horror movies based on their dangerousness.

more glamour science topics:

giant squid
forensic medicine
smart dolphins
mars
how the heck did they build those pyramids?
rainforests
anything involving liquid nitrogen
string theory

My Life Clock is Way Black

being a geezer sometimes has it's advantages. As we were exiting the Fillmore last night in the usual swarm, I overheard a young guy next to me talking to his buddy about "this cool movie from the '70's I saw recently called 'Logan's Run,' the guy who played Logan was, oh, I can't think of his name, he was in 'Austin Powers'..." I looked over and said "Michael York." "Yeah, yeah," the guy said, "and who was the old guy in the movie?" "Peter Ustinov." "Yeah, right!" "...and the girl was Jenny Agutter," I added."Wow, thanks, you're amazing!" he said. Then we dispersed into the night.

True or False?

The following are lines from Beowulf:

"time is running out, a nice guy's future is at stake!"

"I do so like people being eternally grateful to me."

epics speak to me like a homie.

thinking about my past

yes, I wanted to start transitioning when I ws 19, but my ex said if I did, it was the end of our relationship. It's not that our relationship was more important than abstract notions like my "being true to myself" or whatever. It was that I was so bummed about how my body turned out that I thought that I would never be able to pull it off (c.f. "happiness=passing"). Some days I still don't think I can pull it off. So we stayed together a decade longer than we should have not because I was so devoted or tragically conflicted but because I was chickenshit.

I have a hard time forgiving myself for that.

This Is Not

this is not my body, this is not my life.
this is not the gun i used to murder barney fife.
this is not my mission statement, i'm not guarding the bottom line.
i'm not sensing the winds of change, i'm not damp from the mists of time.
this is not poltergeist weather, this is not initiation week.
this is neither the time nor place for the roping off of freaks.
this isn't razorback country, this isn't lornadoon.
this isn't the harvard business review, this isn't the harvard lampoon.
this isn't my change of clothing, this isn't clandestine.
they're not removing the tarry feathers, that isn't terpentine.

an excerpt from my life four years ago...

I feel strangely uneasy today. Like I don't know where I stand with the world. I think it was my talk with mom this morning. And possibly posting the self-history. And the whole stupid Vivian car wreck/sham marriage stuff. And Winston popping back into my life. And getting "sirred" a couple times on the phone this week. and the mystery and dread of rhinocrisis. and realizing what a shambles my finances are, and how I should forget going to Europe any time soon, and how I shouldn't even be going on this vacation next month, but it's too late to not, and knowing that I should probably just sell the house and jeep, even though that's really gonna hurt like you don't know, and feeling hopeless in this job, and seeing Sleater-Kinney last night and thinking "god, I wish that were me up there..."

a mini movie review

"Metropolis"

(no, not that one, the anime version loosely based on that one)

This 2001 state-of-the-art turgid hunk of Japanese animation is very loosely based on the 1928 (or thereabouts) Fritz Lang silent masterpiece of the same name about a technological society subsidized by proletariat oppression that is overthrown by a robot (that doesn't know she is a robot) disguised as an innocent gamin (at least I think that's what it's about). First of all, this rather long movie suffers the same annoying trait as other non-dubbed anime; that is, while the animation draws you in by virtue of the lush artwork, having to concentrate on the subtitles (made even worse in this case by being in a white typeface) creates a feeling of mental conflict that lessens the entire experience. This film uses a fairly seamless combination of cell animation and CGI (funny, the japanese apparently don't have a word for CGI, because in the credits there would be a string of japanese ideograms with "CG" stuck in the middle, then more ideograms), with the net effect similar to watching a really really elaborate and detailed episode of "Futurama." Which brings me to the other quality of this and many other otherwise beautiful anime films that bugs me: Having fully realistic, properly proportioned backgrounds populated by cartoonish characters (or worse, having some characters be realistic, while others are cartoonish). It's as if the artists feel like they have to pay some kind of homage to Uncle Walt. On the other hand, I like the anime habit of indiscriminately mixing asian-type characters with western-type characters; it gives the feeling of living in a world with no geographic barriers. Or San Francisco. At any rate, this show had cutesy people with big goofy noses and tiny pinpoint eyes interacting with gritty, realistic, physiognomically accurate revolutionaries. However, it was the backgrounds that stole the show in this movie: they were indescribably fantastic. The robots were really well done, too; they were lumbering, slow-moving things you could believe were machines, and yet even the non-verbal ones conveyed some kind of personality (one in particular that the hero befriends, a garbage-collecting unit he names "fifi", is especially touching). The directors of this movie also tried to imbue the futuristic world of "Metropolis" with a retro, jazz-age style, producing somewhat disconcerting results. The soundtrack is all be-bop, jazz, and Carl Starling-esque big band flights of fancy-- an attempt, I guess, at recapturing the "art deco futuristic" sensibility of the original Metropolis. The makers of this epic also have some kind of Babylon fixation going on, in an attempt to draw a parallel with the story of the Tower of Babel: the colossal center of power and wealth in Metropolis is called "the Ziggarut," and the strong-arm ruling political party is referred to as "the Marduks." I won't attempt to describe the plot; the plot is pretty much immaterial to enjoying this movie. In short: lotta people get shot; robots get blown up. Good anime is hyper-violent anyway (why is that?). The most bizarre sequence in the film consists of a lovingly detailed destruction of Metropolis to the tune of this old Ray Charles romantic standard whose name it's killing me not to be able to remember, while the hero is desperately trying to save the girl-robot that is the direct cause of all this destruction, while her human skin burns off and she slowly transforms into a writhing mass of electronic fury (all the while buildings are collapsing around him and he's being tossed about feather-in-the-wind style). In the end, the city is destroyed but robots and men bravely face the future together as brothers, hallelulia, amen. Metropolis is a mess, but oh what a beautiful mess.

Another one

stay drunk all the time


they say there's something
strangely depressing about portland;
man, that's my kinda town!
kinda tired of selling short
and buying my soul back long,
spending my down time in the park,
where the healthy do tai chi and falun gong;
i'm just a reliever warming the bench,
soaking up drizzle and exuding the stench
of failure and self pity, it mixes with the pine,
working up the strength to stay drunk all the time.

Words

Some of my favorite words are ones that only have meaning to me. Little glossaries from the secret language Caroline and I always meant to invent:

"zotted (adj.):" you're so tired you only have energy left to whine.

"sponselled (adj.):" tripped up by something, as when something dissappointingly unexpected happens, especially when your own inadequacies are the cause.

Life is a picnic with lots of ants that want to eat you alive.

My favorite English word is "barbarian," because the greek root is the word "barbar," which is the sound, much in the vein of our "blah blah" that the haughty greeks heard when non-greek speaking foriegners spoke. Of course, all civilized folk spoke Greek! Hence the connotation of being uncivilized. Human nature never changes.

Some of the sidewalk stencils in my neighborhood:

"who is extreme elvis?"

"monkey knife fight"

"dyke march 2001
sat june 15
2 - 4 pm
dolores park"

"input is not detected"

"protege la bodega
no tiles basura"

"excuse me, a doormat's good honest work. Only the bored and the wicked rich don't know that..." --Kristen Hersh

Last night my boyfriend came over to break up for me for the nth time. Same old: I'm living for the day, he wants something I can't give him: a family, someone he can proudly take home to meet mom, all of my time. I started crying and we ended up making love. Afterwards he ran down to the cornerstore and got us some Hawaiian Punch, P&G's contribution to my dental caries. He didn't leave until midnight, and I have to go in at 7 to work a double shift. God, I'm going to be so zotted.

The Nurse Wears Harley-Davidson Scrubs


Eating my dinner out of an emesis basin:
Oh happy world of work!
The touch of the skin of others
Oh so many others
My skin never crawls.

Eating my dinner out of a vending machine:
Oh blessed shift worker!
That nurse wears Harley-Davidson scrubs,
This one favors dinosaurs.
I wear scrubs that smell like pajamas
And ride my hips like a sensei's cord of wisdom.

one of the saddest songs of the 90s

in my book is that Jewel song You Were Meant for Me:


Put on my pj's and hop into bed
I'm half alive but I feel mostly dead
I try and tell myself it'll be all right
I just shouldn't think anymore tonight

Because dreams last so long
Even after you're gone
You were meant for me
And I was meant for you...


The alternate name for the song is Phyllis Barnabee Finally Gets a Bra, which was the title of the promo single it was originally released on back in 1995. Don't ask me the significance of that title.

wryness wasted at work

Since I work mostly with ESL Filipinos, word play is largely lost on my co-workers, and the whities that I work with are the usual hyper-literal types that the med tech profession seems to be rife with. But there are a few who appreciate a fucked up view of the world.

I especially hate it when people ask a question from across the room. For example, when someone yells across the lab "CCU wants to know if the blood is ready on Williams,"
I'll yell back something like "What? A succubus wants to gnaw on my booty in a wigwam?"
And of course I'm ignored, but I feel better about the tedium.

those are flat noodles disguised as scalloped potatoes

Sometimes when I'm really hungry and tired I like to fantasize about going to a restaurant and just ordering everything everything that strikes my fancy. Way more than I can eat, with no concern about waste. But I never do; instead I spend inordinate amounts of time deciding what to order, and feeling like it's never enough, and eating every last bit, even if I didn't particularly like it.

My best meal ever, hands down: Back when I was doing insane on-call back in T or C, occasionally, after a gruelling 12 hour shift followed by even more gruelling call-back, I would guiltily go to the McDonald's drive through and order the super-sized chicken mcNuggets meal with large coke. Then take it back to my barely-habitable rehab project of a house, pour all the grease-glistening Meg Nuggets and crispety fries on a big plate and eat it all in one unbroken motion of machine-like orgiastic self-indulgence. Then I would hate myself for hours, but still, it was so satisfying.

I enjoy hanging out at the Haight Street McDonalds munching on broccoli or radishes or some other roughage that I've brought from home and surfing the web. I always buy a coke, so it's not like I'm picnicing there, the workers don't seem to mind. There's something about the hard molded plastic benches in the booths, the artificial plants moderating the light, and the homeless punk kids coming in to buy coffee and use the bathroom that I find soothing. This Mickey D's is also special because it has no drive-thru.

My Struggle with the Equestronauts

I decided to take the "Lower Rhyolite Trail" at Chiricahua National Monument (Arizona) to find some good rocks to climb, or if I couldn't, just tire myself out trying to do the 7 mile loop as fast as I could. Unfortunately, a party on horseback had gotten to the trailhead before me. There were about six of them, all apparently middle-aged, men and women; I figured they were from a dude ranch or something. The trail is pretty narrow and cut into the side of the canyon, so there wasn't any good way to pass them. I was following a few feet behind the last horse, who was being ridden by an older gent whom I guess was one of the leaders. He became aware of my following him, and warned me "don't follow too close, I'd hate to see him kick back and hit you" referring of course to the horse he's on. I told him "don't worry 'bout me, I'm fine" and was just biding my time until a wider spot in the trail came up so I could pass these riders. At that point the trail was sorta wider, so I shifted into high gear and bypassed these annoying equestrians (I mean, like one of the women is wearing one of those felt-covered horsey hats you see people wearing on fox hunts!), going up the side of the escarpment that bounded one side of the trail. This of course sent the party into a tizzy, the rear guide cries "everybody stop!" like I'm going to cause a stampede or something. As I pass the lead horse, I reach out and rub him on the cheek, and say in a soothing manner "hey there buddy..." Once I get in front of them, the guide at the head of the party says "you were really taking a risk there, miss!" I shrugged and said, "not really, I've been around horses a lot," which is not entirely true, but I'm certainly not afraid of them, and have done some risky things around them, like the time I jumped on one and tried to ride it bareback, so I kind of have an idea of what's dangerous and what's not. Plus I found these folks just so annoying. The guide shoots back "then why aren't you riding one?" I'm habitually non-confrontational and deferential, but this time I just couldn't help myself. "Because I don't like abusing animals," I said. The guide of course couldn't let that one go and started in on how horses were bred to be ridden and don't mind a rider, et cetera, et cetera, and I just wanted to say "gee, I bet you couldn't do the entire loop on foot without having a heart attack, you tub of lard!" but instead I put my iPod earbuds back in my ears and put distance between us.

About twenty minutes later I found a nice tower of rock by the side of the trail that I couldn't reist, so I slipped on my climbing shoes and did some dangerous free climbing on what turned out to be incredibly crappy rock. The volcanic tuff at Chiricahua is really flakey and even porous. No wonder the sign at the ranger station said that climbing and bouldering is not allowed!

So anyway, I'm about 50 feet almost directly above the trail, and I hear voices and the clomping of hooves. They've caught up with me, and pass by directly below me, oblivious of my presence. I can even make out their inane conversation: "...he's not making manure, he's fertilizing, haw haw!" refering, I suppose, to the horses. Then one of the women stops and points directly up to where I'm hiding in the rocks. "Wow, look at that rock formation! Isn't it lovely?" but she doesn't even see me! I quickly hide myself and sit tight until they pass by. I climbed down from the tower and put my hiking shoes (which are actually tennis shoes) back on. What to do? I was in no mood to have to come up behind these folks again and have to pass them, although I'm sure it would puzzle the heck out of them how I had gotten behind them AGAIN. So I just turned around and hiked back to the trailhead to try another trail.

Perhaps Pearl Jam's most puzzling lyric

"everything has chains, absolutely nothing's changed
take my hand, not my picture, spilled my teacher, spilled my tincture..."

From the really good song "Corduroy," with perhaps the most distinctive intro of any song from the 90's. And the only song I can think of that includes the word "tincture."

I'm guessing iodine.

I've always appreciated that the label of the Morton's salt (or any other brand) states that it contains
iodide, not iodine, which is chemically accurate, as iodine in its elemental state exists nowhere in nature. In the US, iodide must be added to salt by law, but not so in Canada. Cannucks like goiters or what?

In some Native American/First Nations tribes, goiters were considered attractive.

A Couple of Sundays ago...

I worked a shift over at the Berkeley Free Clinic. I had only one client, but he was amazing. a 42 year old heroin junkie, spitting image of George Clooney (only better, if you cut his dirt-dreadlocked hair from living on the streets). He was pos for hep B and C, wasn't sure if he wanted treatment, very fatalistic. He was high when I talked to him, but still-- this guy was funny, erudite, and eloquent. It started when he used the phrase "wrack and ruin," and I made an off-hand reference to Ragnarok. He then proceeded to expound for 15 minutes on the difference between Ragnarok and Gotterdammerung, Norse theology, the Viking expansion, the ethnohistory of Western Europe. For the next hour as I tried to counsel him, it was the same way, one scintillating digression, one wry observation, one self-deprecating one liner after another. He was freakin' amazing. And for a junkie he had the best damn veins I had ever seen-- I didn't even use a tourniquet when I drew his blood! All the while he was also doing an intricate cat doodle in magic marker on a little pad of paper he held. He left reciting an elaborate and hilarious Star Wars parody dialog he had concocted. Amazing.

Youth of America

We get emailed sex questions at San Francisco Sex Information as well as phone calls. I usually answer a couple on my shift each Friday.

Here's a sample from last week:

Hi,

I'm a young female. I only really discovered masturbation when I was 16. However, I don't do it that often. I'm concerned about the kinds of things that turn me on and make me orgasm when I do. This has been bothering me for a long time and I hope you can shed some light on this for me.
First of all, I can't just watch pornography of two people going at it and just enjoy the fact that they're going at it. I have to add some perverted circumstance to it in my head. Most of these little scenarios have to do with manipulation or non-consensual elements. I like to imagine that one of the people participating, usually female, is being used against her will and that the person using her regards her as nothing more than a "screwtoy" or a "dumb whore." I hate these thoughts. I hate that this is what turns me on and it's like I'm a completely different person once I'm done. To know me and talk to me you would think that there were definite shades of feminism in my personality. When not turned on, the thoughts of someone sexually controlling another person are horrible to me. I completely hate men with misogynistic and shallow sexual ideas.
Do other women like this sort of thing too? Does getting off on these hateful things make me a bad person? Why would I hate this kind of thing normally, but find it exciting when I am feeling turned on?
Even if this isn't necessarily a horrible thing, it's not sexually healthy. My ideas of stimulating sex are obviously flawed. How can I turn myself away from sexual fantasies were people are being tortured and mistreated?
Please give me some comforting words, I'm feeling horrible about myself.


my reply:

Hi, thanks for the email!

So you have a little kink in your sexuality that's un-politically correct-- it's not the end of the world! At least you're not male, which would make your turn-on not only fairly common, but a really bad stereotype. Although we can't say just how common it is for women to have fantasies of this type-- let's call them "degrading sex" fantasies-- we've certainly heard from other women who have similar feelings.

Remember, feelings are not "good" or "bad," they just are. There's scant little one can do to influence what turns one on. The programming of our libidos occurs mostly when we're young and mostly on an unconscious level. So it's not your fault, if "you" is the rational, awake, self-aware, analytical part of your consciousness. Besides, its your imagination, the one place where society's mores and standards have no business mucking things up. We would be telling you this even if you had written that you were a male who had fantasies about sex with children; as long as it's just in your head, it's nobody else's business.

But if you were a male with a pedophile kink, we would also pity you, because there is no legal, let alone socially acceptable, means for bringing those feelings out of your head. Because in that scenario, consent is not possible, no way, no how.

For a woman who gets turned on by images of forced sex, there are lots of outlets for your fantasy, if that's where you want to go with it. As you mentioned watching porn, we're sure you realize how common the themes of sexual degradation, bondage, and even rape are in some of it. Also, if you wanted to act out your fantasies with like-minded consenting adults, and you live in a large city, I'm sure there is a BDSM (bondage/discipline/sadism/masochism) community nearby that you could get involved in. But in our experience, most women who have fantasies about forced sex (which can run the gamut from being the victim, the victimizer, or an observer) are content to keep it at the fantasy level.

Remember, every sadist needs a masochist, and vice-versa. But even in the BDSM world it's all about consent; all the participants are willing participants. There is something strangely seductive about playing with power inequities in a sexual context. If we were forced to generalize about such things, we would say that most people in the right situation and the right state of mind can get a little turned on by being totally helpless or having total domination or maybe even both. Do you remember ever wrestling with someone, a friend or a lover, just playing of course, and being totally pinned down? Wasn't it a little exciting knowing you couldn't escape? Or how about being the one on top? A different feeling, but also tinged with pleasure. You may be the most placid, agreeable, fair-minded person to walk the earth, but you're still human, and your sexuality can have twists and turns that fly in the face of your politically indoctrinated consciousness. Don't think too much about it or it will drive you nuts. Personal perversions are best regarded like birthmarks or being double-jointed: cherished little artifacts of your uniqueness, not things to smother with guilt and shame.

Quality Assurances

Anyway, one of the phlebotomists at Davies screwed up collecting a specimen on a patient about a month ago; the patient had to be called back, and then the phlebotomist (a different one, I think) screwed up a second time. The patient was angry and sent a scathing letter of complaint to the director. The director forwarded the letter to the phlebotomy/specimen handling supe demanding some kind of explanation. The supe, who is something of a nudnick, made all the phlebotomists/specimen handlers write individual responses to the letter (which he gave copies of to all), even if they had nothing to do with it. My bud Lilian, a specimen handler, asked me to write her response for her. Here's what I wrote:


Okay, so the main problem here was that those handling the patient and the sample failed to ask questions. Questions such as “what kind of tube should I draw?" "How much blood?" "Did I draw enough for all of the tests ordered?” Even if there were no other specimen handlers to whom one could ask these questions, there is always a tech somewhere, or one could call Pacific Campus and ask them, or even call Quest. There is always someone to ask!!! Was it just laziness? Shame over not having all the answers? Just wanting to get the patient the hell out of there so one can take a break? Lame, lame, lame!! This isn’t rocket science, just take your time, focus, and double check everything before you let the patient go. Hard stick and iffy amount? Don’t guess, don’t assume, draw the amount the book or whatever says, and if you don’t know how much that is, find out!! The patient would rather see you going to great lengths to find out the answer in order to do it correctly than for you to seem like you have all the answers only to find out later that you had your head up your ass!!

Thank you for the opportunity to vent!

Your faithful chimp,

Lilian

Campin' Cat

Today I had the tent set up in my apartment (North Face tadpole23), and was coaxing the cat inside so she could get acclimated to it.
"This will prolly be our permanent residence someday, kitty-cat." I said.
The cat gave me that quizzical snaggle-toothed look (She's missing one of her fangs) I get from her when I let too many sawdust-caked turdballs accumulate in her scat-box.
"Dude, why are you obsessed with being homeless, the petrocollapse (whatever the fuck that is), your eventual abject sqalordom or being chased into the wilderness by bands of torch-bearing angry villagers? What's with all the annoying fatalistic nihilism? I don't get it." she said.
"Well, I've always kinda thought like that, and although I realize it's not exactly a Tony Robbins-type outlook, It gives me an odd sort of security believing it's all going to end badly, either personally or globally, probably both. I remember throwing up my hands once when I was a child of twenty, after some bone-headed fubar snafu went down in my little life, and exclaiming 'nothing good can come of my life.' Pretty fucked up, huh?"
"Par for the course at age 15, but most of you pampered suburban humans usually grow out of it. You suffer an arrested development on so many levels, my big cuddle-hungry anthropoid."
"Yeah, well you should meet Winston-- oh wait, you already have. By the way, he's gonna be dropping by to look after you while I'm on vacation next week."
"He's kinda hard to figure. I can't tell if he's afraid of me or is trying to make friendly-like. Can't you get the chubby girl with the wild hair that was coming last summer? She has a soothing voice."
"Naw, my friendship with her isn't at the 'take-care-of-my-pet' level, I only asked her because she's in my section at the clinic, and it was a fellow section member, as you well know, that dumped you on me."
"Boy that makes me feel wanted! But living here is ten times better than being with that weird old Chinese lady. At least you let me out, and occasionally take me to the park. But I still hate riding in that plastic box bolted to the back of your bike. What if you wipe out? I have no way out. I'll be bouncing around in their like a marble. Until a car squashes me."
"Don't worry, that thing's a piece of shit, the top will fly off the second it hits the pavement. Besides, you're a cat, you guys always land on your feet."
"Our prowess is greatly exaggerated. But I do appreciate you trusting me to go stalking in the park, even if all I can catch is bugs, seeing as how they cut off my front claws when I lived with the freaky Chinese bitch. But that time you left me overnight-- damn, it was cold!"
"Hey, I left work early and came looking for you-- it was ten o'clock and you weren't at the agreed upon rendezvous picnic table. I wasn't gonna wait around all night for you. And what about the other time I showed up to get you-- I shined my bike light at you and you ran away. What's up with that?"
"I thought you were one of those homeless guys who sleep around there. They try to throw stuff at me."
"Thanks a lot, cat."
"That reminds me-- why don't you give me a name already?"
"Don't want to. Names just seem like frivolous conceits in these end times. Nothing matters. All is dream..."
"There you go with that zen apocalyptic bullshit again!"
"You'll see. I need to toughen you up, get you ready for the rending of the social fabric. What say I take you on a cross-country bike ride this summer? I'll bolt on a bigger box..."
"You wouldn't--"
"I only wish I could reattach your amputated finger tips. Claws will come in handy in the brave new world..."
"Damn, the crazy Chinese lady is looking better all the time!"

The Bird's the Word

So here I am at Albuquerque International Sunport waiting for my flight home to San Francisco. This has got to be my fave airport ever (not that I’ve been to all that many, not like my pop, stalwart veteran of General Electric. When I was growing up, I remember him flying off somewhere like every month. Sometimes I feel ripped off that I have a bunky job that doesn’t send me anywhere. Oh well). At any rate, for once I’m on time and not discombobulated. Once I missed a connecting flight just because I was wandering around the airport (Denver, I think it was). I slept at an airport once because I missed a flight (San Jose, I won’t forget that one). But ya gotta love this airport because it’s so cheery and southwestery and has free wifi everywhere!!! Wifi is my obsession these days. Free if possible. That and dental hygeine. For some reason on this trip something popped in my mind and I started feeling sorry for my teeth. So I’m flossing like a demon lately (as opposed to lackluster flossing), and brushing not just my teeth but my gums, too. Like Doc Mojica says.

This sign is from the wide open spaces between Hatch and Deming, New Mexico. Nutt is the next town on NM 26 after Hatch, and is basically one bar that may or may not be defunct called the Middle of Nowhere Bar and Cafe. That a Nut Hatch is a type of bird makes me chuckle when I see this sign. Am I such a geek that no one else finds this funny? I love coincidental juxtapositions of names (and weird names in general). Like the time in the lab when the patient last names “Vedder” and “Blaylock” appeared right next to each other on a worklist: Mookie Blaylock was Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder’s first band (and an NBA player apparently). Weird, huh? Oh, I was referring to me.

here we go a-fucking-gain.

The terrornauts don't lob blooper balls at ya. At least it's scenic in here, with images of an America not filled with bloated idiots. Why can't we have a public blog? It's so weenie to hide behind anonymity, obscurity. So proud to be unknown! I wish my friends were brave and brash and wanted to suck the marrow out of life. Instead of wanting to go deep stealth into denial, or worse, just to score stronger prescription antidepressants.