December 27, 2003
Lightasmic
My family and I get ready to go out for an evening of wholesome entertainment. Here I am with, from left to right, my grandma, my mom, my dad, and my brother:
Bakersfield has a small zoo of native California animals, the California Living Museum (CALM). It's a cluster of man-made habitats in the grassy hills on the eastern outskirts of the town, landscaped with native California plants and sporting a respectable collection of animals. I dig animals.
CALM needs money to add a new mountain lion exhibit. Some nice young man with a wattage fetish and some computer skills has founded an annual exhibit of holiday lights at CALM to raise money for construction: Lightasmic. This is a popular attraction for wholesome Bakersfield families! Our family piled into the car and toured the exhibit:
Those figures range from four to twenty feet high. In addition, every tree in the facility was festooned with lights. But notwithstanding the PG&E bill, hundreds of people per hour were touring the place, and at $6.50/head, they must be raising plenty of money. Hooray for mountain lion funds!
Here, in the background, are two grey foxes snuggled on blankets under a heat lamp, completely insensible to us. Most of the animal exhibits were closed, and the remaining animals slept soundly in spite of the circulating crowd.
December 26, 2003
Bakersfield Humor
These are the slogans on some souvenir t-shirts you can buy in my hometown of Bakersfield:
In order to find these slogans humorous, you must know these things about Bakersfield:
December 22, 2003
T-Rex: Yellow Alert
The Duboce Triangle T-Rex has previously been documented at green and orange stages of alert, with promises to progress to a red alert. It still isn't red, but it's been updated to yellow alert:
A small pack of immature tyrannosaurs have been preying upon persons along Noe Street unable to escape into the small park at Beaver Street. Persons with small pets or children are advised to be cautious and avoid slipping into a panic near the Beaver/Noe Park as it has apparently become privatized and you cannot get in unless you jump the fence and land in one of those huge cement pots that someone is storing there for whatever reason and there seems to be no logical reason for any of this.Warning: status will switch to red alert in the Duboce Triangle sometime in early Spring when egg clutches hatch, and parents are feeding hungry nestlings.
The SF Recreation & Parks Department site doesn't mention any work on the Noe/Beaver Mini-Park. I must confess that I want to live on Beaver Street. There's even a house at 69 Beaver Street. How awesome would it be to have that address??
December 17, 2003
Cat-Based Temperature Gauge
Photographic analysts know that the presence of a cat in any photograph provides an excellent way to gauge the temperature at the time of the photograph. Sleeping cats works best, as they tend to assume a position that will keep them comfortable over several hours of inactivity.
This is illustrated below in relation to two sources of heat in our (underheated) apartment.
In the image on the left, the cat is shown in a contracted position in front of the fake gas fire in the dining room. Since cold causes materials to contract, you can infer that this heat source is feeble. The cat has often been observed in this position when no heat source is present. During the summer, the cat assumes this position only during chilly, foggy nights, such as often occur here in SF.
In the image on the right, the cat assumes an expanded position in front of the space heater in the living room. This position exposes more of the cat's surface area, allowing excess heat to escape his body. The cat has often been observed in this position during the hottest days of summer. We can infer that this heat source is an effective one.
We can draw two important conclusions from these observations:
Probably the next phase of development for the bonsai kitten is encapsulation in elongated, graduated containers, with each gradation labelled "effing hot"," hot", "just fine", "cold", or "really effing cold". Cats may someday replace the poisonous mercury as a medium for gauging temperature.
December 16, 2003
Elderly Celebrity Hotties
Please enjoy this partial list of actors who are near-elderly but still totally doable:
Some of you may not know that Terence Stamp has been well-known in Europe since his youth, when he was divinely beautiful. I recommend The Collector, in which his angelic face eerily contrasts with his character's psychopathology.
Even better is Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema. Stamp is a mysterious visitor to a bourgeois household who holds everyone he meets in a strange sexual spell. With very little dialogue, he beatifically seduces every member of the family one by one--the daughter, the son, the housekeeper, the mother, and even the father. Each experiences the seduction as a profound epiphany, with surreal results.
This explains why, whenever I see Terence Stamp, I think of him as "the Sex-Jesus"!
December 15, 2003
Gubernatorial Penis
For those of you who have still never seen our governor's penis, here it is.
December 13, 2003
Soufflés and Other Good Eggs
Eggs are a staple of my diet. I eat a three-egg omelet almost every morning, and sometimes a hard-boiled egg with lunch. Carnivores everywhere love eggs because they're nutrient-intensive and delicious.
Last night I was treated to dinner at Café Jacqueline, where the menu is dominated by soufflés. And such soufflés! We ordered the brie and broccoli soufflé, piping hot, perfectly fluffy, and robustly satisfying. Then there was the chocolate soufflé, topped with a thick layer of powdered sugar (try not to inhale it!). Exquisite! I must acquire some soufflé-making skills.
Check out this short promotional video for the Petaluma egg industry, featuring the biggest omelet in the world, an omelet so enormous that the giggling girls who make it must prepare for the task with calisthenics. It also includes an excellent example of "My spoon is too big."
December 8, 2003
Slouching Toward Fabulousness
After some Friday night/Saturday morning drama, I resolved to spend the weekend doing anything I felt like doing, and nothing else. Such a weekend includes these activities and inactivities:
The materials for this jacket cost me about $25, and working on it was totally therapeutic. Drama? What drama? I look fantastic in this jacket!
Faux fur is surprisingly expensive. In the Bay Area, there are no wholesale sources. Even the "discount" fabric stores charge a billion dollars a yard for mediocre faux fur. The speciment on this jacket is particularly high-quality, soft and fine with a trippy-looking three-color pattern. I bought it almost a year ago, on a trip to the LA garment district with my lovely pals who run Radiant Wares. Even at those fresh-off-the-boat, wholesale prices, this stuff was $30/yard!
Fortunately, this jacket only used about 1/4 yard of my precious single yard of excellent faux fur. I have plenty left over for accessories--maybe a hat or a bag, or both!
December 4, 2003
Matt-Stalker
To anyone suffering from this wretched holiday stress, I highly recommend my coping mechanism: inventing an imaginary romance with a local political figure.
I've begun to stalk Matt Gonzalez--just a little bit. Two days ago, I wrote him a dorky email message explaining that he's my new boyfriend. Then I kept checking my email, in case he was so idle and silly-headed as to read my message, visit my Web site, and reply.
Last night, I went to the DNA Lounge for the "DJs United for Matt" benefit with Lamont, John, and Ert, who also has a crush on Matt. Alas, Matt is very busy and could not make it to this event, but we still had fun talking about him and dancing. John mentioned that Matt lives around the corner from me. So now I'm hoping to bump into Matt around his house. Does anyone know his address?? Or maybe I'll just sit outside the Horseshoe Cafe and wait for him.
And tomorrow I can combine my Matt obsession with my love of ringing my little bike-bell: It's Mattical Mass! Maybe he'll even bike with us.
The thing is, lots of hip SF chicks have crushes on Matt:
<*lamont*> so summer's roommate also has a crush on matt
<*lamont*> as well as does the ex-girlfriend of a guy I know in class
<*lamont*> bringing the total to 5 women who are ready to fight for matt
So, there's a lot of competition. Matt can be choosy. That's fine, as I'll probably get tired of this whole Matt thing soon enough. By then, I'll be disgusted with my childishness and wish I hadn't posted anything about my silly little crush. But I'll feel much less embarassed whenever I remember that there are hordes of trixies in the Marina district who are nursing painful crushes on Gavin Newsom. Yuck!
December 3, 2003
Goodbye to Netflix
My exit from Netflix is now complete. (Briefly, my Netflix and Greencine memberships overlapped while I used up my final weeks with Netflix.) For posterity, here's my entire Netflix rental history. I know this will fascinate you.
December 2, 2003
Meat-Flavored Water
It's true. Someone has invented bottled water that tastes like meat. I would like a couple of bottles for Christmas, in bacon flavor! Please, Australia, send bacon-flavored water!
December 2, 2003
Even Puppies Hate Newsom
The local mayoral race is down to a runoff between two very different candidates, Matt Gonzalez and Gavin Newsom, and as usual there's no end of election-related entertainment. At Pine and Divisadero, a Newsom campaign billboard has been amusingly vandalized:
Sadly, I was too rushed to write down what the last image says. Can anyone tell me? My little cellphone camera is weak, but sometimes it's the only tool available to the blogger on the go.
Maybe it's because I live in the Lower Haight, part of Gonzalez's district, but I've seen lots of anti-Newsom vandalism and no anti-Gonzalez vandalism. Gavin Newsom is a slick Democrat with more money and connections than goodness, basically another Willie Brown. He doesn't play well in my 'hood, nor in the Mission district. One pal told me, "Even puppies hate Newsom!" Curiously however, Susan Leal, the candidate favored by the gay community, is now endorsing Newsom.
Matt Gonzalez is a hip, scruffy Green who lives with roommates and sometimes commutes to City Hall on his bicycle. He speaks softly, often with his head down as if he's struggling to overcome some shyness. He's a regular guy with his heart in the right place.
Since he's single, I've also decided that Gonzalez is my mayoral boyfriend, or at least my supervisorial boyfriend. Two weeks ago, I was walking down my block when suddenly my little heart leapt--Matt was walking right toward me! I was too surprised to think of anything to say, and besides he was busy talking to the woman who was walking with him. He's cute! I was atwitter all day long.
