Good morning, world. I was asleep by 10:00 last night, so I missed all the excitement. On purpose.

It’s a new year, but everything’s the same old same old except the calendar. 1995 would’ve been here whether I blew a kazoo and woke up with a hangover or whether I didn’t, so I didn’t.

♦ ♦ ♦

Sometimes when I’m sitting naked at the typewriter with nothing to type, waiting for the inspiration that never comes, it’s fun to play with my bountiful belly.

My gut is so huge I can’t see my genitals without first bending way forward, then pushing my stomach way in. Gotta push it in with my hand, because there’s way too much to merely suck it in, so just now I pushed everything into me as far as it could go, took a look southward ho, and found a pimple growing under my pubes.

A more amusing diversion is sticking my hands, palms up, into the tight sweaty fold between my big fat belly and my flabby legs, then flapping my fingers like flippers on a pinball machine, which makes my blubber rise and fall in wide waves of soft billowing flesh. It's my own Special K pinch! Two hands full, fingers to thumb, filled with fat.

Yeah, I could stand to lose a few pounds. 150 or so would put me near my chart weight, and substantially reduce my general repulsiveness. So am I at least dieting?

Not really. I’m avoiding meat, but still eating too much of everything else. Just now I had a big bowl of macaroni & cheese for breakfast, which was so good I think I'll have another.

And no "new year's resolutions" for me. They're bullshit, and I do not deal in bullshit.

♦ ♦ ♦

At the store for more macaroni, I glanced at the so-called news-weeklies to gauge the falling national IQ. Have we reached bottom yet, or are we still falling?

“How the Gingrich Stole Christmas,” cries the cover of Newsweek, with a picture inspired by Dr Seuss — a pun already stale from dozens of newspaper columns and cartoons for two months since the elections. A bubble on the front cover brags, “55 pages of cartoons & pictures,” so they finally admit it — they’re feeding America a comic-book version of the news.

Time has a picture of Pope John Paul II, because he’s their Man of the Year, but — why? He’s the Pope. He claims he’s a virgin, though there are probably cum stains inside his silly hat. His biggest accomplishment in 1994 was successfully lobbying some international political meeting to ensure that poor countries don’t have access to birth control. Millions of people take Karol Józef Wojtyla seriously, and believe in the stupidity he stands for. I don't, can't, won't — so am I nuts, or is it Time magazine and everyone else on Earth?

A day without work is always good, but today tried hard to disprove that.

My plan was to spend a few hours editing and then printing the master copy of the zine for December, and then get on with living in January. A few hours became several, though, as this five-year-old typewriter with a disk (‘word processor’, says he manual) has been misbehaving.

It still handles typing fine, and reading and writing off its disk memory, but it balks at printing long texts. The daisy wheel slips a gear, and every fifth page or so is gibberish (no jokes about the other four, please). When that happens, the carriage jams and refuses to turn, and now the spellchecker’s suggestions are in Spanish. ¿Qué diablos le pasa a esta cosa?

Upshot is, I’ve re-read the manual and cleaned the machine’s innards — there were a few cockroach corpses in there — and reworked all of December as ten smaller files instead of one big file, and it worked. It’s printed a month of master copies I can take into work and turn into zines. It took the whole day, though, and it wasn’t fun, and I’m hoping I won’t need to buy a new typewriter/word processor.

Modern technology is so persnickety. Something goes wrong and you barely know why. Probably the roaches.

Other than those frustrations, the only borderline-interesting moment all day was when I killed two roaches with one slam of the dictionary against the wall. Usually they’re not close enough together, so getting two at a time is a rare joy. Stay out of my typewriter!

Addendum, 2021: Today, 'word processor' means software. Microsoft Word is a word processor, and so's the Libre open-source software I use instead. Back then, though, a word processor was both the software and the machine that housed it.
Mine was a typewriter, not all that different from the ones Mark Twain used, but with the joyous addition of a disk-based memory. Wow, man — you could type to either disk or paper. It had an LCD screen that showed a whopping 14 lines of text, and it had the newfangled ability to edit text before printing.
Man, it was science fiction — a Brother brand WP-1400D, top of the line when I bought it, and definitely the coolest thing I owned. The video below brings back fond memories, I tell ya — that sound it made when you switched it on and the carriage jumped a little, and the clackity-clack of watching it type, with every other line typed in reverse.
I don't remember when I replaced it, but to my memory — other than January 2, 1995, I guess — it served me well. That model is long-since discontinued, of course, but there's still a FAQ at the Brother website, and Wal-Mart has its ribbons in stock.
Having such a high-tech device in my rez hotel was a worry, not because of the cockroaches, but because some crackhead might steal it and sell it. When I moved in, I made sure the word processor was undetectable in a box or bag when I carried it up the stairs...

As I was getting dressed for (damn it) work, I chanced to inhale my own exhale, and it was rank. I haven’t brushed my teeth or showered since Friday morning, because those are workday chores, and anyway, personal hygiene is overrated, don’t you think?

My philosophy is, if it doesn’t stink, it doesn’t need to be cleaned. Haven’t changed my underwear since Christmas. The socks, which I’ve been wearing since mid-December, were a little stiff and stale, so I rinsed then in the sink yesterday, dried them on the fan overnight, and they’re back on my tootsies this A.M.

♦ ♦ ♦

Dead beat and bone tired from a weekend of doing nothing, I could’ve used one more day off, maybe two. It’s the same every weekend, and probably the same for you. Same for everyone who stops and thinks about it (which leads to a different question, does everyone stop and think about it?).

Having to work for a living... doing stupid things for stupid people... and being locked into a schedule of exactly what days and what time you must start and stop doing those stupid things... "Insanity" is a word that's used too often, too casually, so I'll just say, that doesn't seem extra sane.

But there I was at 7:55, flashing my plastic card and stepping into the building, riding the elevator up, to start doing stupid things for stupid people at the assigned stupid time.

♦ ♦ ♦

Carlotta wore a simple outfit that simply knocked me out — a soft beige flowery velvet v-neck t-shirt that was a little too tight, with a loose yellow vest and tan slacks. Yeah, I noticed. From “Good morning” to “Good night,” it took will power to hold eye contact when we spoke, politely trying not to look at everything else.

When we had a question and walked across the hall to get the wrong answer from an executive, she tugged at her top and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t have anything to wear.”

“You look great in nothing to wear,” was my instant retort, but of course I didn’t say it. We’re at work, and I try to be a good kid. All morning, though, she was snagging my back pocket with her pinky whenever she needed me.

Pretty sure I wrote about her tugging at me a few weeks ago, but maybe I edited it out? The pinky-yank at my pants is her new thing. She often pulls at my belt or pocket, when she has a question. It's a little uncomfortable, but in a good way.

It’s a weird dynamic between Lottie and me. She doesn’t get my better jokes, because English isn’t her native language or maybe because they’re not funny, but she laughs at my dumber cracks. She makes jokes too, makes me laugh, but her best lines are invariably the dirty ones. When we’re talking, half the time it’s about work, but the other half is something racy.

This afternoon she asked what I thought of her perfume, and asked me to sniff at her neck. I sure didn't say no. On low-cut days like today, she'll often find a reason to bend over when we’re talking. She’s flirting with me, and it’s not just my imagination. Even Kallie has commented on it.

But Carlotta and I have also talked about sexual harassment in the workplace, and of course she’s had no tolerance when it’s happened to her. I once heard her holler at a then-co-worker who got out of line, and she’s told me that at a different job she slapped and shouted at a touchy-feely boss.

A little low-level harassment is what she’s doing to me. I’ll never complain, though. I'll never discourage her in any way, and never understand why she toys with a fat slob like me. Everyone needs a hobby, though, and I’m happy to be hers.

♦ ♦ ♦

After work and supper, I snuck back to the office to print December, but found several of my many bosses still there. I whirled around and left without being spotted, but only because I was lucky. I don't want to be asked, “What are you doing in the office at 7:00 at night, and what’s in your backpack?”

I wondered why they were there so late, but then remembered, it’s inventory time at the store. Lots of things to be counted, input, and filed, so people in other departments are working overtime hours. The managers and executives don’t actually do any of that work, or any work at all, but they stay late to sit around and watch.

Taking inventory will take some time — maybe weeks, I dunno — so I might have to pay Kinko’s to print the December issue, or wait until the inventory is over, and the photocopier is more easily available after hours.

Doing the math … 8¢ p/page at a copy shop, times 26 pages p/zine, means every copy would cost me $2.08, not counting postage and envelopes. 32 people have paid for the next issue, so paying for printing would cost … $66.56, with no copies kept for future orders. Ouch. I have the money, but it would hurt to spend it. My wallet is thin, and I'm a cheapskate, so the December issue might be a few weeks late.

Addendum, 2021: Why was Carlotta so 'friendly' toward me? I always wondered, and never figured it out. It was pity, probably. She'd known me for a year before any of it started, so maybe she'd (correctly) surmised that I was 100% harmless, too introverted to ever say or do anything.
I was fat, lonely, and almost intentionally repulsive, and she tossed me a kindness by smiling at me, talking to me, and weirdly asking me to sniff her neck. I remember that last moment vividly, years and decades later.
It was inappropriate for the workplace, and I wish it had been a bit more inappropriate, and wherever you are today, Lottie — thank you.

Julio, one of the temps in the office, has been sitting behind me for a month, sometimes praising Satan. Guess he decided I’m trustworthy, cuz he casually confessed he’s a disciple of the devil a few weeks ago.

Judy, the mega-Christian lady I used to work with who’s now twenty feet down the hall — she’d freak and probably call 9-1-1. Me, though, I don’t care that he wears a black pentagram medallion every day. It’s all make-believe — the cosmic good guys, and the cosmic bad guys. Just something we sometimes talk about.

Today he was talking about curses, because he really does take this crap seriously. We’re approaching a full moon, and he said for ten bucks he’d put a curse on anyone I’d like. Told him I’d pay half that, if he could bring Jennifer seven years bad luck.

“It won’t take seven years,” he said. “If I curse her, the bad luck will begin immediately. But why should I give half off?”

“Because you hate her too. You’re the one she’s walking all over every day. She mostly leaves me alone, so I only hear it in the background.” Which is true. She treats the temps like they're less than human.

He seemed open to price negotiation, but wanted cash in advance. “Nope,” said I, “the rube tourists are in Union Square. I don’t believe in what you’re selling, but I’ll pay if you can deliver.”

“What does ‘deliver’ mean?”

“I want her dead or dismembered or at least fired from here by March, but I’m ruling out any direct action. I’m hiring you for a curse, not as a hit man.”

“You gotta pay in advance, though," he said. "I’m a temp. I won’t be here in March.”

It’s all blather, of course, but we shook on it and I gave him five dollars. If there’s a Satan in Hell, which of course there isn’t, perhaps I’ll have good news to report shortly.

♦ ♦ ♦

Since I've said I find political rants boring or infuriating or sometimes both, a reader suggests that I shouldn’t write about politics in the zine. But, dear reader, you misunderstand — it’s only other people’s politics that sets me off. My own politics make perfect sense.

Today’s headline is that the mother of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Transylvania) says “Newty” has called Hillary Clinton a bitch. So here’s my opinion on that: Who effing cares about an interview with someone who openly admits naming her son Newt and calls him Newty?

♦ ♦ ♦

With Stanley running interference — doing the trash thing, and reporting back that the office was empty — I came in late and got the December issue printed and stapled and ready to mail. Stanley must be good luck — the machine didn’t jam once. Then we sat around talking for a while, and liberated some of Jennifer’s chocolates.

While I was using the company's copier, I also used the company's phone to check my messages, and there were two from the same stranger — a lady's voice, offering compliments on the zine, advice about my hemorrhoids, and a few other interesting comments.

My phone number is in the back of every issue, and she's not the first reader who's ever called. She's the second. But I bet normal people don’t ever get a call like that from a stranger, and normal people don’t leave such messages. Zine people are not normal, and I love that about us.

As I came home for lunch, Mr Patel flagged me down — he’s the guy who runs the rez hotel. I wondered, what's up? Had I left my vibrator out and offended the maid? Did he want me to wipe away the cockroach corpses around the sink? Did they find my tiny stash of pot in an empty can of tuna fish?

Nope, he wanted to offer me a job — the night shift at one of the Patel family’s other rez hotels. “We like to hire the tenants,” he said, “if they seem responsible.” Nobody’s ever accused me of being responsible before, but I do keep quiet, I’m coherent enough to carry on a conversation, nobody’s evicted me for nonpayment of rent, and I haven’t accidentally set myself or the building on fire with my crack pipe. Compared to most of the people who live here, that makes me an upright citizen.

What’s the work? Mr Patel says it’s just checking in latecomers, buzzing residents in and making sure they don’t have a hooker with them, keeping the place quiet enough that people can sleep, "maybe some mopping and toilets," and "solving problems as they come up," which might be worrisome.

I'd have to move, but I'm tired of this upscale neighborhood, and I've been planning to move anyway.

The pay is less than I’m making at the current job, but it includes free rent, which makes it not much less than I make now. It sounds like the hassles and bullshit would be substantially reduced, too.

It’s not a done deal yet, but inside I’m somewhere between optimistic and ecstatic. Never would’ve guessed that the Patel family would hire a white guy. Everyone I’ve ever seen at the front desk at this hotel, at any rez hotel, is Indian. The maid is Asian, though, so I guess it’s not entirely a family operation.

I still have to talk to the day-shift manager at the other rez hotel, who’s another Patel cousin like my Mr Patel. Unless someone throws me a spitball, though, damn right I'll take the job, and the department store can kiss my smelly butt.

♦ ♦ ♦

After work and in a good mood, I asked a local longtime panhandler if he’d like to join me for dinner at the O’Farrell Cafe. I've bought meals for homeless guys before, but usually it's to go (meaning, I'll buy you a sandwich but you gotta go). Never brought a hungry stranger into a diner before. It was probably stupid of me, but I've seen this guy for months and my gut said he's not crazy.

His name's Delbert, and I made it clear that this was a one-time offer. I'm a cold-hearted bastard even when I'm not. He had a Chinese dinner, I had the cheese omelet, and he wasn’t very talkative, which is perfect for me. I read a zine. He didn't say much more than thanks. That's enough.

Met with the other Mr Patel to talk about the job, and my answer was nope. It was nice imagining it, but the pay was less than my Mr Patel said — not a lot less, but enough to make me hesitate. Maybe I misunderstood.

And the rez hotel I’d have to live and work in? It's in the skankiest hooker and heroin part of the Tenderloin. It wasn't bad inside, but that's not a block I want to call home.

I could maybe overlook those issues, but the job also wasn’t graveyard shift like I thought. My Mr Patel said night shift, but that's 6PM to 2AM Thursday-Monday, so when would I go to the movies? I couldn’t go to evening shows during the week, and even matinees on the weekend might not get me back on time. A job is a job, but being able to go to the movies whenever I please is pretnear the only think that isn’t pathetic in my life, so -- no.

His feelings weren't hurt, and I'm not sure he would've hired me anyway. He seemed disinterested and skeptical even as we shook hands. Was I supposed to wear a tie or something? I have my dad's bow tie, but it didn't occur to me. Oh, well.

♦ ♦ ♦

And speaking of movies: After work I BARTed to the UC in Berkeley for their ongoing “Films Out of Focus” series, tonight a double feature of Reservoir Dogs (1992) and the Hong Kongian film that inspired it, City on Fire (1987).

Both stories involve botched jewelry heists, with a police undercover agent who’s in on the job, and the cop becoming buddies with one of the baddies. The Reservoir Dogs trademark shot of thieves in suits and sunglasses walking slow-mo on city streets, and the memorable three-way standoff in a warehouse, were also imported from Hong Kong.

City on Fire tells its tale from the police point-of-view, with a silly subplot about the undercover cop’s on-again off-again engagement to luscious Carrie Ng. It’s all set against a Christmas backdrop, and the song on the soundtrack is “Unrewarding,” a likably cynical commentary on everything in life, sung Shirley Bassey style. It’s a good movie.

Reservoir Dogs eliminates all the subplots and zooms in on the crooks, has no women to speak of in the story, and it’s made all the more American with a generous dollop of retro rock and unnecessary racism. It’s a funnier, livelier, bloodier, and all-around better film.

Quentin Tarantino ought to be embarrassed, not for the borrowing, but for not acknowledging it. Nobody in the arts stands alone, certainly nobody in cinema, and it’s no shame to say what your inspiration was — The Magnificent Seven was spawned by Seven Samurai, and said so right in the opening credits. Tarantino, though, never said a word, just milked up the rave reviews, until Film Threat nailed down all the similarities. So he’s a pud, albeit a pud who makes good movies.

On the streetcar ride to Stanley’s place for breakfast, while Muni waited at a traffic light, I watched an ambulance load up and drive away from an old folks’ home. There was no flashing light or siren, and nobody seemed to be in any particular hurry.

That’s not a good sign.

♦ ♦ ♦

“The Finer Diner is open,” said Stanley, and we had broccoli & onion & cheese omelets, with sliced potatoes fried in lemon butter on the side. It was an excellent breakfast. So excellent, in fact, that I bought some potatoes and lemon pepper on my way home. That's the third meal Stanley has cooked for me, and to show my gratitude I won’t cook anything for him. That would be cruel gruel.

Then I gave him a crew-cut with his clippers, and we went to Small Press Traffic, a cool zine store I recently discovered but hadn’t yet had the chance to explore at length. When I’d briefly popped in there a week ago and saw that they sold zines, I mailed them a copy of Pathetic Life, and I was hoping when we walked in there’d be three staffers huddled at the counter, reading it and laughing out loud.

Instead, a double dose of disappointment. Nobody was reading my zine, and there’s a “for lease” sign in the window. A pink-haired woman at the counter said they lost their lease, and the shop will close on January 21. “We’re looking for a new location,” she said, “but everything’s up in the air.” Well, that stinks, but we spent some time in the aisles and I bought three zines.

After that, Stanley and I went thrifting all over the Mission. He went for big-ticket items at bargain prices — an FM receiver and tape deck, and an Apple printer. I only wanted cheap stuff — two decent shirts, and some plastic trays I can make sandwiches on (and stop buying paper plates).

The thrift score of the day, though, perhaps the greatest thrift score of all time, is a working word processor — same brand as the machine I type the zine on, with a manual and a spare daisy wheel, and it uses the same size disks and daisy wheels. Once I’d tested it out, I was ready to pay the price tag, $35, but Stanley volunteered to act as my agent and negotiated the price down to $20. Twenty bucks! A daisy wheel alone costs $45, new.

Now, next time my main machine acts up, I’ll have a second-string machine on the bench, ready to be plugged in and powered up. Oh, man, it’s a beaut. Maybe I’ll type tomorrow on it.

We lunched at a good taqueria, and I paid, to say thanks to Stanley for dickering down the typewriter. I didn’t catch the name of the restaurant, though, and with someone to talk to, I forgot to take notes and write a burrito review.

♦ ♦ ♦

I rode home on BART instead of Muni, and there was another little girl like the one I mentioned on 12/26, singing almost the same song that set me off that day, but with different words — with the right words. Last month it was the theme from Barney, the stupid TV show about a stupid dinosaur, but today it was what it should be, “This old man, he played two, he played knickknack on my shoe…”

“What a cute kid,” I told her mother with a smile. “And it’s so nice to hear that song the way God intended, instead of hearing about Barney.”

“I don’t like Barney!” said the daughter, quite emphatically.

“You’re a very smart girl,” I said.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ego alert — take cover!

Here's a letter from Bruce Anderson, editor and publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser. I’d sent him my zine a week ago, and today he said,

I get a lot of zines, but yours and Larry Livermore’s are the only ones I read all the way through. You’re a wonderful writer!
Would you write an account of who you are and how you came to be living in a bum hotel?…

He even enclosed three bucks to buy the next issue of Pathetic Life. If you haven’t seen the AVA, or haven’t seen me raving about it, maybe you can’t comprehend why that short note from a stranger means so much to me. It’s not the first or finest compliment I’ve gotten for the zine, but cancel your New York Times subscription, because the AVA is America’s finest newspaper. For me, a pat on the back from Bruce Anderson is like some garage tinkerer getting a post card from Albert Einstein that says, "Good work."

As for the article Mr Anderson has assigned, it doesn’t sound terribly interesting, which makes me perfect for the job. I’m the world's foremost expert on the topic of me.

Addendum, 2021: Good news: Google says Small Press Traffic survived their 1995 eviction, and they're still doing good work. I've added them to the sidebar.

Spent my morning reading a sleazy, bad paperback novel someone sent in the mail a while back. I’ve forgotten who sent it, but thank you, whoever you are. Poorly written prose is reassuring, if you imagine you’re a writer.

Ate a family-size sack of Fritos, so I guess I’m a family.

Stuck some 3¢ stamps onto outgoing envelopes that already had 29¢ on them, because postal rates have gone up, and I should’ve gotten my letters in the mail more quickly. Also pondered the question, who was Paul Dudley White MD? He looks like a stern, humorless fellow, on these stamps.

Masturbated twice. Thank you, Carlotta.

Big news — at a little past 1:00, a rare moment of inspiration slugged me in the belly, and I knew what I wanted to say to the AVA. It took me four hours to say it, but I’m proud to say it’s not awful.

That’s the yardstick I measure my writing by: It’s either awful (you’re reading it), or it’s not awful (try again tomorrow).

Glanced at my watch at 7:02, and for just the briefest moment I thought, hey, I‘m missing 60 Minutes. I don’t miss it, though. I just don’t see it any more. After all those years of addiction, it's surprising there were no withdrawal pangs when I gave the television away.

I do wish there was something good at the movies, though. Alas, no, so it's back to that so-so book someone sent.

Work work work, blah blah blah, and then I went grocery shopping. Before stepping into the store, though, I stepped into a phone booth and clinked some coins.

I mentioned several days ago that I’d gotten two phone messages from one stranger. I should’ve called her back over the weekend, but I’m a dolt and didn’t until tonight. Cynical and shy am I, and I was pretty sure it would be awkward, because what the hell am I going to say to some stranger on the phone?

Someone calls and leaves a message, you call back. Them's the rules, so I dialed, half-hoping to reach an answering machine. She answered, though, and we were almost instantly having a conversation, and it wasn't awful.

Her name is Judith, and she’s clearly an extrovert or maybe an outravert (which is even farther off the scale than an extrovert) but she seemed like nice people anyway. I wasn’t looking at my watch and trying to squeeze in “goodbye” like I usually do, so I'll judge the call a smashing success.

She made it clear quite quick that she’s happily married and not offering anything romantic. Well, she seems nice enough, but me and an extrovert could never happen anyway, so hearing about her husband didn't break my heart.

And then we talked for a looong time. Mostly she talked, but I wasn’t bored. Best of all, we hung up without arranging to meet anywhere or any time, or even saying we ought to. That's something I was happy not to hear, because I never say much beyond “uh” and “um” when I meet anyone.

After adios and click, I went into the store and pushed a cart, and tried to count my friends. I didn't need a calculator. There aren’t many friends.

Here in California, Kallie and Stanley are not quite friends but maybe getting there, and Lottie and maybe now Judith are further down the scale. In the life I left behind to move here, there were three friends, but of those, only Maggie has kept in touch, and even Maggie and I aren’t getting along too well in our last few letters and calls.

There are zine readers and publishers who write me letters, and some of them I’ve replied to, but I’m not sure even the best of pen pals count as a friend.

I’ve always had more ‘fractional-friends’ than friends — people I could talk to about baseball, but never politics; about sit-coms, but never sex or politics or zines, and so on. There are always untouchable topics, conversations that can’t be had. Gotta keep parts of myself hidden, so as not to offend the wrong fractional-friend with the wrong opinion or obnoxious joke.

To my thinking, a friend is someone you can talk to about anything, everything. And right now, I got none of those. Only fractionals.

When a thought occurs to me, I want to simply say it, not stop and sort through what I know about whoever I’m with, to estimate whether he/she could hear it without stomping away angry. A friend doesn’t have to agree with whatever babblings come out of my mouth, but I gotta know I can babble and you’ll be a friend anyway. And a friend knows the same, that he/she can say anything to me and it'll be OK.

Of course, that’s only half the reason I’m basically friendless. I'm also just not friendly. Here in the zine I’m wide open, but in person I almost never speak unless spoken to. Being so damned introverted means most people never get a chance to know me.

When I try to be sociable, I’ll usually stumble across some invisible, unspoken line, say something shocking, and whoever’s been unlucky enough to talk to me will suddenly want to be a stranger.

That's why I’m usually alone, but I’m not complaining about it. It would be nice to have a friend, but until that happens — or if it never does — I try to be a good friend to myself. I tell myself everything, and never get offended and stomp away angry.

My job mostly revolves around inputting price changes to merchandise sold in a well-known chain of department stores.

In the old days, my predecessors probably walked through the stores, putting stickers on stuff on the shelves, but we are pushing toward the 21st century and it's a marvelous high-tech world — we use computers and key in UPCs, the barcodes pre-printed or attached to everything in every store.

With that introduction, here's an email, verbatim, from a junior executive at the store. I guess he sent it to me because he knows I work with UPCs, and he and I have talked about weird non-work stuff a few times. Nothing this weird, though:

Doug,
Could you guys procure a written explanation for me of the universal product code? I am particularly interested in the existence or nonexistence of an unlisted break digit (probably a 6) that divides the 12-digit UPC into two 6-dogot sequences.
I have heard from a number of sources, most recently a movie called Naked, that the break digit is either a single 6 placed between two other 6-digit sequences, or a treble-6 sequence, thus fulfilling (in some people’s eyes) the prophetic mark of the beast. You’ll recall that, as detailed in the Apocalypse of John, one cannot do business without this mark.
Anyway, I would be most grateful if you could obtain this info for me. I shall be immensely disappointed id this is not the case, as I’ve always thought that we retailers were doing the devil’s work, agents of the Prince of Darkness, etc.

—Burton Keith, assistant buyer, Domestics Dept.
Sorry, Mr Keith. UPCs are annoying and possibly evil, but they’re not the Anti-Christ’s calling card.
Honest to Satan, there’s no unlisted break digit. We have a machine in this office that prints UPC labels. I’ve used it. It's 12 keystrokes, sometimes 13. There are no hidden digits.
And yes, they can actually be 13 digits, not just 12. Products made in Europe generally have 7-digit UCCs (that’s the first portion, which identifies the manufacturer), so European UPCs are longer, which sorta blows the 6-6-6 thing.
If you’re looking for signs of the Apocalypse, I suggest watching Dan Rather nightly. The UPC is simply an inventory-management tool, which allows us to make more mistakes, more quickly.
—Doug Holland, dumb flunkee, Merchant Services Dept.

What I didn't say is, Try not to be a dolt. UPCs aren't even new. They've been around for twenty years, and commonplace for at least ten. People are idiots and they'll believe anything, no matter how farfetched.

Also, I've heard that Mike Leigh's movie Naked is good, but I have not seen it, and this makes that less likely.

There was almost no work to do at work, which is OK — the pay's the same whether or not there's much to do. They’re rewiring the counters (desks) where we work, so people have been moved around, leaving nobody within easy earshot of Carlotta and me.

She is flirtatious, and I don’t mind, and I guess/hope seeing that I don’t mind encourages more of the same. Being by ourselves seems to encourage her, too.

She was talking about the Warriors (basketball team), and how she’s drawn to tall men, and then she said, “My husband is 6 foot 11.”

"Jeez, really?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s six feel tall,” she said, holding her hand over her head, “and eleven inches out,” touching her thumb to the center of herself and then out in front. I laughed, and probably blushed.

I don't remember what we were talking about, but she said she's strong, and flexed her arm muscle, asking me to feel it. Okay, I squeezed her muscle and said something stupid like, “Not bad.”

“Can I feel your muscle?” she asked, and because her jokes are all dirty and corny, I guess I knew what was coming. I flexed my arm muscle, which ain’t much, and she said, “Not that muscle,” giggled and walked away.

Later she talked about going swimming at a cousin’s house when she was 16, and discovering two friends, both girls, all over each other in the bedroom. Okay. Haven’t got a lot to say in response to such a story, so I just smiled.

Men talk like this all the time, when it’s just guys in the room. For all I know, women do too, but most women do not talk like that with me.

Toward the end of the day, she was speculating about who might be gay in the office, which is kinda silly since most of the gays are way way out. She wanted to bet me on Julio, one of the temps — is he gay or is he straight? — which is of no interest to me but for Lottie I am very willing to play along, and we bet a dollar. She asked how to find out, and since she was wearing a fairly short skirt, my suggestion was that she hike it up to her thighs to see if his eyes bug out like mine would. She laughed, but didn’t do it, damn it.

That was the only out-of-line thing I said all day, but Carlotta said a dozen things. I should add that it wasn’t non-stop, and only totaled maybe fifteen minutes of childish nonsense all day.

I am not trying to make this into a tawdry zine of stroke material, but the assignment is, I'm supposed to tell you what happens every day. Today, nothing happened except some PG-rated conversation, and it was one of my favorite days ever at the office.

The morning started grumpy, with four more security guards than the usual one downstairs usual. Maybe the store got a bomb threat or something, I dunno and barely care.

Whatever it was, it was a pisser. After getting into the building with my pass/badge/thingie, I had to flash my employee ID to two guards at two doors, and the back room was all sealed off, so I had to take the longer walk through the first floor of the store.

It was worse for the temps, though. They have badges the same size and shape as mine, with a magnetic strip that gets them into the building, but they’re plain white plastic cards — no printing, no pictures — and the guards were not impressed. The temps had to sit and wait until someone from our office came back downstairs to vouch for them.

With no explanation for the extra security, everyone was a little edgy, but Carlotta promptly perked up my, uh, spirits. She was dressed in a low-cut blouse, not all that low-cut but low enough for a hint of cleavage. Scout’s honor, I barely would’ve noticed it anyone else wore that blouse, but with even less work to do than yesterday, and again nobody near us, our conversation got racy and now and then she bent over, and yeah, I’m pathetic.

Since it had been a high-security morning, she started by recapping the store’s big security catch from a few years ago. Some big-ticket merch had vanished and the company suspected employee theft, so they installed security cameras in the stock room. The first thing the cameras caught was a ménage à trois. A three-way in the frickin' stock room! All three were fired, of course, and everyone heard about it, and by now it's company folklore.

It before I was working here, though, and I’d always suspected the story was apocryphal, but Lottie said she knew all three participants. She provided enough additional details — names and backstories — that now I’m pretty sure it’s true. And true or false, it’s fun being paid to listen to such filthy details.

Later, she was talking about her high school days. “I used to like girls,” she said. “I was afraid to do things with boys, afraid of getting pregnant or getting an awful reputation, but it was safe to do things with my girlfriends.”

“You did things with other girls, eh? What kind of things?”

“Well, I don’t — I don’t want to say,” she said shyly and slyly. Instead she drew the letter K on a piece of paper.

“K,” I said, “is for kinky?”

“No, silly. K is for kissing.”

"Ahh,” I said, disappointed. “Just K? Nothing else?”

She wrote a P.

“Heavy P?” I asked, and she smiled, shook her head yes, and I squirmed a little in my seat. Last time I’d played such a silly parlor game with a girl we were in junior high, but I liked it then, and I liked it today.

I wrote “C” on the paper, but she didn’t understand, or pretended not to. Instead she said, “Have you ever…?,” playing bashful by not quite asking the question.

“I’ve K’d, P’d, even C’d. I’ve done the whole alphabet, Carlotta, just not as often as I’d like.”

“No, no, no,” she said. “I mean, have you ever… with other guys?”

“Oh, sure,” I said blithely. “Back in high school, kinda like you, the girls were impossible to get, but the guys never were.”

“And did you…” She pointed at the K. Yeah, this was an insipid conversation, but it was funny, and take my word for it, a very attractive woman pointing at the letter K can be much, much more interesting than price changes in a department store.

I wrote a big H, and she frowned and said, “H? Like homosexual?”

I added a J, and said, “Hand jobs.” I’ve been working in offices for eighteen years, and it was the first time I’d discussed hand jobs with another employee, on the clock. “We did hand jobs,” I explained.

“That would be M,” she said, smiling gorgeously. Oooh, that smile.

“No, Lottie,” I explained. “M is something you do for yourself. HJ is something you do for me.” There is a bit of a language barrier between us, but with that, she understood. It occurred to me, though, that I probably should have said “something someone else does for you” instead of “something you do for me.” She didn’t catch it, though, or didn’t say anything.

“Do you still...,” she almost asked.

“Do I still what? Do I still do hand jobs? We’re grown-ups, Lottie. If we’re going to talk about hand jobs, we can say ‘hand jobs’.”

“Hand jobs,” she said, with her accent I’ve always found sexy, but today I found sexier. “Hawn chobs, hawn chobs, do you steel do hawn chobs?”

“Nah, that was only when I was young and desperate. These days I just M a lot, and once in a great while if I’m really lucky I F.”

She giggled, “You don’t like boys any more?”

“Nope, I don’t like boys. Never did, really. I don’t like men, either. I like women. They’re softer, not so hairy, smell better, look better, and they don’t fart as loud as men, at least not on purpose. Honest, I don’t know what women see in men. We’re repulsive.”

“I like men,” she said. “Women are too soft.”

“No man could be soft around you,” I didn’t say, not because I was being careful, but because that line didn’t occur to me until ten minutes later, when I was in the men’s room.

You’re thinking this was all an awfully adolescent conversation, and of course it was. Most of the day, Lottie and I just quietly worked, but there were several other brief but outrageous conversations. Just about every time she talked to me, it seemed to be naughty.

Like, when one of the temps came over to ask a question, he ended up talking about his time in the navy, and somewhere in the conversation he mentioned his rank. Lottie leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I like seamen.”

And when we’d gone an hour without saying anything to each other, she asked if I wanted some of her sunflower seeds, and I said sure. She pointed at the floor and said, “Beg.” No, I didn’t beg, but still …

♦ ♦ ♦

This company’s motto ought to be, “The bullshit never ends,” but i suspect it's about to.

Everyone got a memo from Boss Babs, amounting to a brief overview of how the Entire System of Everything will be done differently, now that the merger has been finalized and my employer is now owned by a different giant conglomerate. The memo ends with this line: “Also, please plan on working Saturday May 27th, and Monday May 29th (Memorial Day) on these conversion activities.”

That’s a laugh, and the answer is no. I’ll work on a holiday weekend if I need the extra money, but otherwise, no way am I sacrificing squat out of my free time for Big Babs.

Even funnier, she seems to be pretty sure that her department will still exist in four and a half months. I’ve been through exactly what's coming, though, from the other side — and so has Babs.

When I first started temping here, a year before I was hired, it was the opposite situation. Our chain of department stores had just acquired a smaller chain of department stores, and what happened? A lot of the smaller company’s clerical staff was laid off. That’s the way it works. Always the devouring company lays off staff from the acquired company, and this time we’re the acquired company.

So you wrote a great memo there, Babs, and indeed, there may be a big conversion project coming up, but I’m not so sure we’ll be the people doing that work. We’ll be the ones looking for work instead, and that might even include you, Babs.

♦ ♦ ♦

When the zine gets a good review, I usually don’t mention it, just because good reviews in the self-published world are easy to come by. It’s not hard to be better than average, when average is amateur. Besides, a lot of zines publish nothing but good reviews of everything they see.

But this week’s Anderson Valley Advertiser includes a good review for Pathetic Life, and it’s making me glow like Chernobyl. I’ve read it over and over, and I’m celebrating with a gallon of butter pecan ice cream. Tomorrow, of course, the zine will return to its regularly scheduled pessimism and monotony.

As the remodeling continues in the office, today I was relocated to a different room, where Kallie is coordinating all the paperwork for the inventory, and I was doing my ordinary work. Kallie talked about the Rolling Stones and her hopes for an acid weekend, and I didn’t see much of Carlotta, until she burst into the room and announced to us, breathlessly, that she’d found the diary she kept in high school.

She was so amped up about it, my first thought was that she’d found it just then, in her purse or in a file cabinet in the office. But no, she said she’d found it yesterday in her attic, and it was full of “awful poetry,” she said. So of course, she read several poems to Kallie and I, but Carlotta was so giggly I couldn’t judge whether they stank or shined. Then she left the room, still laughing like she’d been listening to Carlin.

I’m uncertain what that was all about. Maybe uncertainty is what it was about? From the giggles, she was apparently nervous about doing a poetry reading at work, but nobody had asked her to. It was her idea. I wrote poetry in high school too, but you’d have to threaten to shoot me to get a reading. No way would I volunteer.

Her best break-buddy from Accounts Receivable was laid off a few weeks ago, so maybe she’s lonely. Maybe she’s nuts. Well, definitely she’s nuts. My guess is, Carlotta is trying to connect with people — with me, with the flirting, or with Kallie, with the poetry.

Maybe you’re tired of hearing about Carlotta. Some days I get tired of her, too, but I get tired of everyone. That’s why I’m a hermit. I put up with Calotta's nuttiness because she's beautiful and makes me feel tingly.

Maybe you’re wondering why I don’t write about Kallie as much as I used to. She and me still talk, but it’s been a while since we hung out away from the office. I still like her, sure, but our range of acceptable topics hasn’t widened, so we’re mostly talking about things we’ve already talked about — The Stones, the drugs, her van, her camping, her chiropractor, her flatmates. It’s pleasant enough, but until there’s something new to report, there’s nothing new to report.

Hey, I wonder whether Carlotta says flirty things to Kallie, like she does to me? I didn’t ask either of them, though.

♦ ♦ ♦

One of the temps walked out today, but since we were working in different rooms I didn’t get to see it happen. Jennifer says she told him they’d need his services for two more weeks, and he stood there for a minute, didn’t answer, and then he just grabbed his coat and left. This was a couple of hours before quitting time.

Jennifer told me she didn’t understand why he left, and I think she’s telling the truth. She lacks the introspection or empathy it would take to make the connection, between a temp walking away from two weeks of work, and the shitty way she treats all the temps.

♦ ♦ ♦

I checked my phone messages, and wished I hadn’t. My mom called, and said she’s coming to visit again next month. Said. She didn’t ask, she announced it as fact. Immediately, I felt a headache coming on.

She says she’s bringing my sister, Katrina, and Katrina’s family, and to me, that part of the uninvited visit sounds like fun. Just thinking of seeing my mother, though — and so soon after her catastrophic visit in August — yeah, I took three aspirin.

I don’t think Mom wants to see me. She wants to convert me. She wants me to be ten years old again. She wants me to be Momma’s little boy, and maybe I am, because I didn’t call her right back and tell her Hell No. Instead I called Katrina, who was very surprised to hear my voice for the first time in 3+ years (me and the family are not close).

After a few minutes of catching up and some laughs, I told her my dilemma — basically, I’d be delighted to see you, Sis, but Mom is a big old pain in the arse.

Katrina says I should simply lie about everything — tell Mom I’m a big fat Christian, that I go bowling with Jesus three times every week, but barf, I won’t do that.

We talked a little longer, and I’m looking forward to seeing Katrina, but I’m not going to lie to Mom. And also, I’m not going to put up with a rerun of her bullshit from summer.

If Mom’s visit goes as ghastly as last time, I’ll break all ties. I will fucking change my phone number. I’m already planning to move to a different rez hotel, but I’ll forget to give her the new address.

All this and more I’ve done before, when the family (mostly Mom) has been more than I was willing to handle. I’ve disconnected myself completely, twice already — for six months the first time, circa 1988, and then for two years the second time, 1991-93. If there’s a third time, I swear, it’ll be forever.

I’m dreading Mom’s visit next month, but she’s who she is. I love her. We’ll make the best of it. Had a nightmare about it last night, which actually puts my mind more at ease — however bad it goes, it won’t be as bad as the nightmare.

Look, the Mom part of the visit is going to be a disaster. She'll say and do whatever it takes to slice me apart, because that's what she does. I'm trying to be zen about it.

On the bright side, my sister is pretty cool, and we always got along well. I think I met her boyfriend once, if he's the same guy she was dating in the late '80s, and I didn't want to strangle him. Her daughter has always been a sweet kid. All four of them are coming, and my stoner nephew George isn't, so just by the numbers, I'm at least half looking forward to their visit.

♦ ♦ ♦

I had wanted to see Dr Strangelove and The Manchurian Candidate at the Elmwood in Berkeley, but they’ve eliminated their early shows, which makes it impossible.

Maybe I’d reluctantly pay full price to see a double feature that starts at 7:00, but checking the running times in my movie reference book, tonight’s second feature would end at about 11:30, maybe 11:45. It’s a twenty minute bus ride to BART, which shuts down at around midnight, but what if the bus is running late, or the theater shows more previews than time allows? Movies at the Elmwood could mean a night in a Berkeley hotel, so adios, Elmwood, and instead I took the subway to the Castro, for an Alan Rudolph double feature.

Not certain it’s supposed to be a comedy, but Choose Me (1984) is a hoot. Lesley Ann Warren is an ex-hooker who now fucks for free, but never with the man she wants. Keith Carradine is a wry quipping loner, and he’s the man she wants. Rae Dawn Chong is a toothy dame who writes poetry so bad it belongs in a zine. Genevieve Bujold is a friendless and loveless shrink who spews feel-good advice on a radio talk show. Rudolph stirs these characters together like vegetable stew, treating everything seriously, but I laughed a lot and hope that was the intent.

Though it’s only ten years old, Choose Me reminded me more of the 1970s, because the menfolk often seemed to be posing for the sheer joy of looking manly, as was the fashion — never really, but in movies. And it’s too bad about Lesley Ann Warren. I always confuse her with Susan Sarandon; they look similar, play similar roles, but Sarandon is a much bigger star and makes much bigger movies.

Remember My Name (1978) is a great entry in the hell-hath-no-fury genre. Geraldine Chaplin is determined to make life miserable for Anthony Perkins, and she’s so good at it you can’t help rooting for her. Again, I hope that was Mr Rudolph’s intent. It’s a sly, spooky story that seemed vaguely familiar, and I suspect it was the inspiration or uncredited source material for Fatal Attraction.

♦ ♦ ♦

Waiting for the #8 bus home, a woman on a bike rolled up to the bus stop and said, “Hi, Doug!” She used to be my boss, when I did phone surveys a few years back, and she was always one of those happy-go-smiley sorts, always in a good mood, always outgoing and friendly. It's the third, maybe fourth time she's spotted me on the street since that job, like tonight, and it’s always the same. She’s glad to see me, I guess I’m glad to see her, I wave and say hey, and she’s all, Doug this and Doug that, and I try to be sociable too, but I don’t remember her name and never will.

I awoke from a very strange dream, and rushed to type it all before it could fade from my memory. Hurry, hurry!

All the most boring people in the world were sipping cocktails at a party, celebrating some boring new ‘zine’ being published by the department store. Jennifer and Judy and Babs from work were there, and Cam from downstairs here at the rez hotel, and Mr Patel (the building super), Mayor Frank Jordan, a couple of local street preachers, and a few other people so boring I’ve never mentioned them in this diary. They were all dressed in fancy tuxedos and evening gowns, dilettante poseurs to the max, talking about how great each other’s zines are, and how great the store’s zine is. MTV and Entertainment Tonight were covering it live, calling it The event of the year.

I wanted to leave. I wanted to heave. Nothing could be worse than this gawdawful party, and then it was worse. There was a giant screen, a feed of the TV coverage, and I was on the screen… and I wasn’t a guest. I was the waiter, carrying a silver tray of fancy sausage hors d’oeuvres, and offering some to Babs and Mayor Jordan.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ate a big plate of beans for breakfast, with two ‘grilled cheese’ sandwiches on the side (not really grilled, just toasted and microwaved). I only mention the meal because, while it wasn’t planned, it did figure into the day’s events.

♦ ♦ ♦

The cable cars were half-empty, there were almost no cars on the streets, and the neighborhood looked nearly deserted. What’s with all this peace and quiet, I wondered, with no-one to jostle on the sidewalk.

Turns out a football playoff game was underway at Candlestick, and most of the metropolitan area’s idiots and assholes were either at the stadium or watching on channel whatever.

I hope the 49ers defeat those Dallas Cowpersons, not that I actually give a damn about sweaty athletes being paid to crunch each other’s bones, but if the 49ers win, they’ll go on to the Super Bowl — which would mean another super Sunday like today, walking wide-open sidewalks and whistling a happy tune, with the city almost all to myself.

The Crooner was on duty, but with barely any audience, so I joined him for an enthusiastic duet of “Maria,” from West Side Story. Then we harmonized on the chorus of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” I tipped him three dollars for ruining his songs, and strolled off singing “Hey, Mr Tambourine Man” in falsetto, though I don’t know half the lyrics.

Have you seen The Omega Man? Charlton Heston? It’s a post-apocalypse movie, and it opens with Heston driving a sports car at ridiculous speeds down complete deserted urban streets. That was me today, only on the sidewalk and without the sports car. Wheeeee — I’m the last man on earth!

Well, not quite the last. There were employees at Books Inc, a store I don’t like, because they once refused to special order a book for me. Sure, I looked like a bum that day, but I look like a bum most days. I had my wallet and cash out, ready to pay, when the doofus behind the counter simply said no. So screw that place. This morning’s breakfast of beans and cheese had made me marvelously flatulent, so I strolled the store’s aisles farting loudly near the customers.

Another of my favorite capitalist experiences is 'not quite shopping' at Walgreens. Unlike Books Inc, the neighborhood Walgreens has never treated me especially crappy, because they treat all customers especially crappy. At this location, anyway, there are never enough registers open, and there’s always merchandise stacked up, blocking the floor where customers would stand and queue and wait and wait for the employee who doesn’t give a damn anyway.

Walgreens sucks, so especially if I’m in a hurry, I shop at Merrill’s instead. Their prices are better, their employees are better, and I swear, even if I buy exactly the same stuff, it’s better from Merrill’s. Picture me posing with a smile on their billboards.

When I’m not in a hurry, though — like today, just having a good time — it’s fun to pretend I’m shopping at Walgreens. I walked in under the big W, took a basket and filled it with everything I needed and some things I didn’t, and moved a gallon of ice cream from the freezer to behind the raisin bread on the shelf. Then I took my basket of groceries to the inevitable logjam of customers waiting for the one person working checkout, and left my groceries there. Let loose a ten-second rippler, and went across Market Street to Merrill’s.

In front of that store, there were four guys and four girls, none of them 18, all of them heavily pierced, happy as hippies, and three feet off the ground if you know what I mean and I think you do. Well, I am big and fat and funny-looking, and a couple of them gave me a look of revulsion. I didn't want to disappoint them, so I held out my hand like a beggar, and said the only sentence of French I know, “Comment allez-vous?”

Why French? Why not?

But then two of them said something back to me in French, which astounded and defeated me. You win, kids. Having no retort I only laughed, but my demonic laugh on the street can be effective. Belching is also effective, but I’ve never learned to belch on cue. Soda is required and I’d had none, so the kids only got the laugh. Everyone comes to San Francisco to see the sights, and I try to make sure nobody’s disappointed. Yes, I was a little high myself — can you tell?

Then I came home and started typing about this beautiful day, and now horns are honking from every direction out my window. The local millionaires in shoulder pads must’ve won, San Francisco is celebrating, and by golly, I’m celebrating, too. If I’m lucky enough to still be alive two weeks from today, the 49ers will be in the Super Bowl. I won’t be watching. Far better than that, I’ll be enjoying another day of just about owning an empty city.

Addendum, 2021: A moment of silence, in memoriam for Merrill's.

Merrill's was a small chain of drug stores with several locations across Northern California, founded in the late 1800s, and still a going concern when I lived there in the 1990s. Merrill's was always better than Walgreens and Rite-Aid and CVS, but was driven out of business after the giant chains came to town.

Apparently, the last Merrill's closed in 2004, leaving the city a little less than it was.

Five days a week, the department store pays me to do nothing important. Eight holidays a year, they pay me to do nothing at all, which is nice. A day off work is always better than a day at work.

Most of those holidays, though — Labor Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, etc — are kind of sad. I don’t give much thought to what they're supposed to mean, because if I do, it’s a disappointment. On Labor Day, as a working stiff, I’ve never felt honored, always felt ignored. On Memorial Day, I can't say thanks to the soldiers who gave their lives for this country, without remembering that so many of them died in unnecessary wars, like Korea and Vietnam and whatever dumbass war comes next. On the Fourth of July, hey, I like fireworks as much as the next schmuck, but what comes to mind mostly is the interplanetary distance between America’s claims and America’s reality.

Martin Luther King Jr was born 66 years ago yesterday, and today is his birthday (observed), or so the calendar says. It's the only holiday where what’s celebrated seems seriously worth the bother, with no caveats and no excuses. I saw American apartheid as a boy, when my family lived in the South. I remember ‘colored’ drinking fountains, segregated businesses, even segregated government offices. I remember when black people were expected to be subservient and silent.

You don’t have to be black, only a decent human being, to feel queasy thinking back to that, and the change is largely because of M L King. He led the fight to make this country almost a decent place to live, and while clearly he didn’t succeed, he accomplished enough to cost him his life. He freed a lot of people, but they say the good die young, so surely there should be a day honoring Dr King.

What’s that you say, there is a day? Yes, it's today, Martin Luther King Day — but only if you work for the federal government. If you work for a corporation, your boss is telling you that today doesn't matter. You get New Year’s Day off to honor Pope Gregory XIII, and Thanksgiving off to honor a bird or a football game or something, and of course Christmas off for Christ’s sake, but there’s no time for honoring a black man who gave his life trying to make this country better.

At my workplace, it’s just another day at the office. The stores are all open, regular hours. Did something important happen today? Sorry, we’re fresh out of holidays in America. Funny how that works.

“When I was in high school, I was on the verge of living a pathetic life, but things turned out otherwise. Now I am a happy, contented person, and yet that pathetic guy is still in there, watching in amazement. There is a pathetic guy in all of us, but only a certain few are privileged enough to live the life.”
— Jim Moul

It still startles me when something here seems to resonate with someone. Like, maybe I’m not the only freak, or as much of a freak as I thought? Maybe there are more freaks out there? Or maybe most of us are freaks, and the real freaks are the freaks who aren’t.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jennifer isn’t a thoroughly awful person, but awful is in her wheelhouse. She certainly can be awful. Usually, though, she just gnaws on my nerves, with minor annoyances that feel bigger because I have to work with her every day.

Today she brought nuts, three varieties in tin cans, to share with the office. Well, that's nice. She popped open the tin-can tops, and promptly put plastic lids over each can.

This is an extremely small thing to complain about, but it drove me, well, nuts. Nuts won't go stale over the course of a few hours. If they’re for sharing, wouldn’t you leave the lids off? Not Jenn. Every time anyone took a nut or a few, they first had to pry off the plastic lid, and then replace the plastic lid after. Anyone who didn’t re-seal the lid was chided by Jennifer.

Yeah, I know it’s nothing. It’s trivial. I should just say thanks for the nuts. Thank you, Jennifer. A little late, but there, I said it. My complaining probably says more about me than about her.

When I grow up, I'm going to be a cranky old man.

♦ ♦ ♦

At Market & Stockton at lunch, some blue-haired guy handed me a safe-sex pamphlet. Condoms get handed out around town, but this was my first pamphlet, and it’s crammed full of good advice: “Plan ahead. Carry latex wherever you have sex: bushes, bars, baths, bookstores, beds, bus stops, back alleys, BART…” Ah, I do love this town. Sex in bed? Bizarre.

♦ ♦ ♦

Well, I’m out of things to say about a basically boring day. Nibbling the nuts I brought home from work, and I’m strangely tired again. Got ten hours of sleep Sunday night, ten hours Monday, and now it’s 7:03 on Tuesday night and I’m yawning and ready to knock off already. Usually I sleep 5-6 hours nightly, so I ain’t complaining, not feeling sick or anything. If I’ve contracted some rare Nicaraguan Sleeping Disease, though, and one of these nights I never wake up, it’s been nice sharing my pathetic life with y’all.

Margaret still calls now and again… and again. Maybe more again than I’d like. Today she called me at work, and said she wants to fly down to Frisco to visit — twice. “Once in June, definitely, for your birthday, and maybe once before then.”

Look, I like her. Really, I do. I'm not wild about visitors, though. My mom and sister are coming next month, and that's enough visitors for 1995.

Margaret is a little crazy, and she makes me a little crazy, and it’s never going to work out between us. Dames usually say this to me, instead of me saying it to them, but — I think me and Maggie work better as friends.

When she called, though, she made it clear that this would be a "more than friends" visit. The thought of that stirs my blood, I won't lie, but the last time we saw each other she frickin' beat me up.

Also part of the equation is that she’s sorta suicidal. I don't know the details, and she rarely talks about it, but Maggie tried to kill herself, some time before I knew her. That's something I don't want, and sure as hell I don’t want it on me, so I hesitate to say, point blank, it’s over, stop calling me, a Christmas card is enough, knickers on please.

When she suggested two visits in six months, I told her I’ve taken a vow of celibacy. I don't know where that came from. She didn’t believe it, because we kid around and always have, and of course it sounds ridiculous. I don’t need to take a vow — I’m ugly, crude, bad breath, the whole package, so celibacy is bestowed upon me.

As lies go, it's a good one, though. If I say it several more times over several weeks, keep a straight face with no chuckles, she’ll maybe believe it. Yeah, the details are starting to take shape in my mind… How's this? I’ve been hanging out with some Buddhists, see, and we chant a lot — or is that the hairless Krishnas? Whatever. We’ve all sworn to abstain from sex of any kind until, um, New Year’s Eve 1999, and even then, we’re only allowed sex with other men. And only once.

Or, I could be a grown-up. I could remind her what she told me, before she forgot: That we’re over. We could do lunch, but no sleepovers. Cripes, I hate being a grown-up.

♦ ♦ ♦

Massive mood swings, man. Factsheet Five came in the mail, and I of course flipped straight to the review of Pathetic Life, except it wasn’t there. I started hollering at the walls, Jesus H Christ! I’ve been sending freebies to R Seth Friedman, and he told me to expect a good review, but I never got the promised post card with the text, and now the zine isn’t even listed. Well, double-fuck you too, Friedman!

Then I started flipping through the rest of Factsheet Five, and guess what? Pathetic Life is an Editor’s Choice — that’s why it’s up front, instead of being back with all the P zines. I take it all back, Seth. You’re a wonderful fellow, a perceptive critic of the written word, and it was silly of me to imagine otherwise.

The zine has gotten too many good reviews lately; it’s screwing up my equilibrium. Somebody please send an angry, disgusted review, preferably demanding your money back, so I can snicker.

Anyway, the entire evening was absorbed into Factsheet Five, reading through the reviews, checking off zines I want to send for, until way too late and only as far as page 48, I clicked off the lamp and faded into the sunrise.

OK, grab a beer or a bong or whatever. This is gonna be a lengthy entry. Today was a shitty day at the big brick monument to money where I work, and I lost my temper and walked out.

First thing in the morning, Jennifer told me that Kallie was out sick for the day. Jennifer existing is a negative, and Kallie being gone is a negative, so the day already sucked.

Then Carlotta came in, wearing a lovely low-cut dress — a summer dress, I think it’s called, though it’s the middle of January — and it looked great. She could never not look great, and then she leaned her cleavage over my desk and told me I’d made an hour’s worth of big mistakes yesterday.

What I’d done was, I’d jotted down a long list of names of the company’s several so-called presidents — one wouldn’t be enough, I guess — and the many vice presidents, along with which departments each of them are responsible for. Then I’d sent this list to everyone in my department, and everyone in all the departments we interact with, and up the chain to all the executives on the list. It's a list we update every few months.

Well, I got a lot of the names and titles and responsibilities wrong, said Carlotta. She said it nicely, but still, bearing in mind that I almost literally could not care less, I was still surprised to hear that I’d screwed up so badly.

So I took another look at the company directory, the computerized list I’d referenced in updating our list of who’s who. Many of the executives in charge had been shuffled a few months ago — they get switched around like kids playing hopscotch, all the time, which is why we have to update the list every few months.

But the company directory — the screen all employees reference when we’re looking each other up — hadn't been updated. And that's why the list I'd made and sent out had been all wrong. So I had to send an e-mail to the person who manages that list, and tell him to, you know, manage that list. When he finally manages that list, then I’ll have to recreate our updated list all over again.

If that all sounds ridiculous, welcome to office work.

I wrote a somewhat sarcastic memo to everyone I'd sent the list to yesterday, telling them to disregard it, with the tagline, “If we can’t trust the computer, what can we trust?”

So I was already in a bad mood, and as soon as I hit ‘send’, I noticed that everyone was complaining about the stink — the odor of burning rubber and/or toxic chemicals was in the air, and it was vile.

I called the security office to report the smoke, and ten minutes later, they sent up just one doofus-looking guard, who sniffed around for a minute and said, “They’re probably just tarring the roof. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

‘Probably’ means he was guessing. He didn’t know that they were tarring the roof, but he was ready to assume it was nothing, and leave us breathing what smelled like death.

“Oh, you wouldn’t worry about it?” I said too loudly. “Well, I’m worried, and my next call will be to 9-1-1.”

From the fire a couple of months ago, and some e-mails afterward, it's 'understood' that calling 9-1-1 is frowned on — it could shut down the store’s cash registers for an hour or two. So I didn’t call 9-1-1, but I called Babs. She’d handled the November fire fairly well, and I thought she’d give a damn more than the fat gray-haired security guard. Babs was out, though, so I left a frustrated message on her voice mail.

Not wanting to do nothing or wait too long, I took the stairs up to the roof, to see if maybe they were tarring it. “Authorized personnel only,” said the sign on the door, but I authorized myself, same as I have several days when I wanted some sunshine. Nope, there was no tarring going on, just the ordinary mess of old mannequins and rotting sales displays that are always stacked up there in the open air, waiting for a strong gust of wind to blow them over the edge and onto the pedestrians nine floors below.

I'd decided to call 9-1-1, so I rattled down the stairs and back to my office, but it looked like something was finally being done, so I didn't dial. Several of the company’s building maintenance staff were there, and one of them was measuring the air with a hand-held air measurement device. One of the temps had vomited at his desk and left to get some air outside. Everyone else was standing around. Nobody was working.

Lottie asked where I’d been and I said, “Up on the roof, and they’re not tarring it.”

“Oh, the roof sounds good, though — I could use the air,” she said, so up we went. In the sunshine, we looked over the edge to the streets below. We talked for a while as the wind tussled her hair and dress, but I couldn’t hear much of what she was saying, so loud was my imagination.

When we came downstairs again, the stench had faded and the ‘experts’ had left. The temp who’d puked was back at his desk, but he looked not so hot. Carlotta sat down and started working again, but I just stood there with a hell of a headache. I’ve rarely gotten headaches since a few years back, when I stopped giving a damn about most things, so I’m blaming the pain in my brain on whatever was in the air.

Which means, my job had poisoned me. And that pissed me off. And then came the worst moment of my day, and Carlotta’s.

She got up to take a photocopy, and one of the temps (a different one) was using the copier. They said a few words about whatever, while she waited. Then the dumbass temp said to Lottie, “That’s a very nice dress,” emphasizing very and quivering his eyebrows. Of course, she told him off furiously, and loudly, but when she returned to her desk she covered up with an un-sexy sweater, buttoned to her chin.

She hadn’t slapped the lout, but I wanted to. I feel sorry for Carlotta, of course — she should be able to come to work and not be leered at. But I also feel sorry for me. I'd been enjoying the jiggle. I’m sure every man on the eighth floor had enjoyed it, but because one fool had big eyes and a bigger mouth, the cleavage got wrapped away.

So I was in a certified sour mood when some senior executive from toddlers’ clothes handed me a huge stack of rush-rush work, and said, “I cleared this in advance with Darla and Babs.” Grrrr. Neither of them had said anything to me. Darla had taken the day off, as management types do whenever they damn well please, and Babs was still nowhere to be found. I semi-politely told the suit that I’d do what I could do.

The work he’d given me was tall enough it would take the whole day, and the day was already half gone, so I enlisted Carlotta’s help. I also apologized to her, for what the dumbass temp had said. “Are you going to file a complaint?” I asked, but she shook her head no.

“Politics,” she said. “If I complain, I’ll just be 'the girl who complains'.”

“Well,” I said, “can I complain?” She shrugged.

Anyway, I figured the work would go quicker with Lottie’s help — in her damned sweater. But it didn’t take two minutes to see that the paperwork had been filled out all wrong, all through the stack, and that we couldn’t process any of it without an hour’s worth of clarification from that senior executive — who’d vanished. And my head was still pounding with the toxic-induced headache.

So I called the executive who’d given me the stack of work, left a blunt but businesslike message on his voice mail, telling him he’d have to come back and fill in all the blanks on all the forms before we could do the work. And that’s when I noticed that the toxic stink was coming back.

At that point, I knew my day was over. I am paid to put up with a certain amount of crap, but my limits had been exceeded. I called Security again, and way too briefly said, “Fumes, eighth floor, again. Maybe this time send someone who gives a damn, not the grandpa guard.”

Then I left my desk, and walked over to the other side of the building, where the stink wasn’t as noticeable. I barged into an office empty since the last round of layoffs, and logged onto the company’s e-mail system.

To the senior executive who’d turned in his ‘urgent’ work all wrong, I listed his four most obvious errors, and repeated my phone message that his work wouldn’t be done, wouldn’t even be started, until he came by to straighten his mess, but added, no hurry, because for today I’d be gone.

To Darla, my missing boss, I sent an email complaining about the temp who’d harassed Carlotta. “He’s certainly not the kind of help we need,” I concluded gallantly, but not quite selflessly.

My third and final e-mail was to everyone — Security, Building Maintenance, Babs, Darla, all my co-workers, and all the temps: “Huge headache from the fumes. I’ll be back if there’s air to breathe tomorrow.”

Then I picked up the phone at this unoccupied desk, dialed '9' for an outside line, and called 9-1-1.

I could feel my headache dissipating as the elevator opened onto the main floor, and I walked past the shoppers and out onto the sidewalk. Quitting time came about three hours early today, and it felt good. I’m not sure I’ll have a job tomorrow, and honestly … it wouldn’t be too depressing if I didn’t.

Somewhat surprisingly, I still have a job. Nobody even mentioned that I left early yesterday, though Darla pulled me aside to tell me not to call 9-1-1 again without prior management approval.

What does a fellah have to do to get fired around here? I slack off a lot of the time, gossip with co-workers by e-mail whenever I’m bored, most of the managers have heard me bad-mouthing the store (I’m not terribly discreet about it), and I’ve trained my bowels to move mostly on company time. Today, as usual for a Friday, I slipped out twenty minutes early to cash my paycheck, then came back just to punch out.

Also, I didn't say this to Darla and Babs, but my only regret from yesterday is not calling 9-1-1 sooner. If it's needed again, I'll call 9-1-1 again.

♦ ♦ ♦

There was some “girl talk” between Kallie and Carlotta, about romances remembered and others best forgotten, and I guess I’m an honorary girl because I was part of the conversation.

Kallie said she'd met some guy last weekend, and she’s got the hots for him, and yeah, I’m slightly jealous. Lottie said Kallie should give the guy a call, but Kallie’s not an old-fashioned girl so she’s called him already, twice. He hasn’t called back, which makes him a fool in my book, and I said so.

“I’m no prize,” Kallie said.

“You’re a grand prize,” I said, “and don’t you forget it.” Not an original line, but it came from the heart, and it's a rare moment that I don't stumble over the words in a situation like that.

Kallie likes to downgrade herself, like I sometimes do. She's “a little tubby, not exactly a model, and pushing 40” (those were her words), but I see an attractive, intelligent woman who deserves better than a lonely life like mine. Did I say that? No. I knew I'd say it wrong, so I just shook my head ‘no’.

As for the friendship between between Kallie and I, it’s been stalled for a while, but today's conversation was maybe the next step I’d been hoping for, where we can talk about personal stuff instead of just ‘music’ and ‘things’.

Kallie came across my essay in this week’s Anderson Valley Advertiser (it’s at the back of the zine you’re reading), which led to an odd conversation later on.

“Your article was kind of depressing,” was Kallie’s comment. Good, I thought. I’d intended it to be uplifting, but any emotional response to something I’ve written has to be a compliment, right?

“I used to be depressed like that,” she went on, “until I found my spiritual side in the Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu. You really ought to read it.”

“I am not very spiritual," I said, "and the article wasn’t meant as a plea for salvation or religion or meaning in life.”

“Just read it, Doug — as a favor to me. It might change your life, like it changed mine.” So she got kinda the opposite message from the article than I'd intended, and I'd been assigned to read a book as punishment. I told her I’d look for it at the library, and she didn’t notice that I never said I’d read it.

Then she offered me a free session of regression to my past lives. She's told me that she has a home business dispensing such therapy, but I’ve told her before and told her again today, “I don’t believe in such things.”

“I know,” she said, “but believing isn’t required.” Past life therapy, she says, can be beneficial whether t he client believes or doesn’t.

My next defensive move was something else she’d mentioned a while back, that the therapy doesn’t work as well when she knows the client personally, but she replied that even if it doesn’t work as well, I’d still find it an enriching experience.

I don't want to be that kind of enriched, but I was out of excuses, so we half agreed to go back several centuries some time soon. Maybe next month I’ll be writing about my past pathetic lives as a Viking explorer’s handservant or a horse or something.

♦ ♦ ♦

Today — January 20 — I received a Christmas card from noted zinester Arthur Hlavaty. It had been sent bulk mail, which made me laugh like Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride.

I could count all my friends, now and probably forever, on the fingers of one hand, and count the people I’d send a Christmas card to on my middle finger, but dear Arthur has so many friends that his season’s greetings are pre-sorted by zip code for a discount on postage.

Thanks for thinking of me, Arthur, and a belated Merry Xmas to you as well.

♦ ♦ ♦

BARTed to the Victoria Theater for a rare screening there. Usually that old place is dark and empty, but once or twice a year they unlock the door and show a few odd or old movies, which are never advertised in the paper. To even know there’s a screening, you have to find a flier someplace, or hear about it by word of mouth.

The promised theme for the evening was drugs drugs and more drugs, and it was a benefit to raise funds for a locally-produced indie feature. That's close enough to charity that it warmed my heart, and that's the only heat the theater provided. Having been there before, though, I’d planned ahead and wore an extra layer of pants.

I like the Victoria, and wish it was open more often. Can’t beat the ease of getting there, almost literally on top of a BART station, and I like the lady who sells the tickets lady. It’s always the same lady, and she gives every customer a smile and a thank you that seems to say you’re welcome here. Also, the concessions are affordable, the projectionist has 20/20 vision, the seats are plush, the bookings are always intriguing and usually include short subjects, and the building itself is an interesting if not quite ornate old semi-palace.

For five bucks admission, we started with Peter Fonda riding a motorcycle, but it wasn’t Easy Rider. It was Not So Easy, a 1973 educational film about cycle safety, co-starring Evil Knievel. Stale but campy fun, with a true/false quiz at the end that got plenty of audience participation.

The Trip (1967) stars Peter Fonda again, as a yuppie taking his first dose of LSD, with Bruce Dern as his wise friend and guide. The movie mostly doesn’t preach against drugs, it just takes you on Fonda’s trip and lets you decide for yourself. Quite an unusual concept, and it's an unusual movie.

The problem, though, is that dropping acid on screen, visualized on a Roger Corman budget for special effects, is not exactly a mind-blowing scene, baby. The script, by Jack Nicholson, is fair to the drug and honest to its time, but it also includes every 1960s slang cliché, so there are some accidental laughs. Hell, there’s even a lava lamp.

Corman chickened out at the end, though, with a photographic effect that seems designed to undermine the otherwise happy ending. And also, there's a tacked-on anti-drug warning at the start. Everything in between, though, makes you want to do drugs. I’d pay to see it again, and in fact I just did, since I’d seen The Trip a couple of years ago, down the street at the Roxie.

To assist with the low-budget effects, the sweet scent of marijuana was noticeable in the theater, and I’d be surprised and saddened if there wasn’t some Lucy in the Seats with Diamonds as well. There was, however, tragically no sharing with the fat guy. Ah, well, I’d brought my drug of choice — licorice, laced with chocolate.

Jigsaw (1968) was billed in the theater’s flier as “the only psychedelic noir ever attempted.” That’s a fair assessment, but so’s the fact that it fails flamboyantly. Bradford Dillman plays a man who’s lost his memory and apparently his sense of humor after a bad LSD trip, and Harry Guardino is the half-witty private eye he hires to figure out who he is. The music by Quincy Jones and some imaginative cinematography are high points, but the story is a cardboard cutout of psychological and drug clichés.

After Jigsaw, as people started leaving, a voice from the balcony invited us to stay for a special surprise, and they dimmed the lights again. It was The Losers, a 1964 CBS documentary about drug abuse in New York City, with glue-sniffing, pill-popping, reefer-smoking, adolescent addicts on the street, getting their kicks taking goofballs and cough medicine, and breathing anything but air — cleaning fluid, gasoline, model cement, nail polish, and underarm deodorant. Oh, the humanities! There were so many junkie soundbites, I half expected to see William S Burroughs, but he must’ve had been on a different astral plane.

I’m making fun of it now, but The Losers was not funny, just infuriating. The documentary never asked the real question — What’s so fucked up about our society, that so many people want to escape it any way they can? The answer, of course, is everything.

And every messed-up boy on screen (they were all boys) talked about awful things, but almost nothing they said was really about the drugs. It was all about fear — of police, of strip searches and jail, of involuntary commitment to mental hospitals, and so on.

CBS was apoplectic about all this, of course, but my impression was that these people's lives weren’t ruined by drugs, they were ruined by laws against drugs. Without exception, all the kids we met seemed to have their wits about them. They were soft- and intelligently-spoken, like anyone else just looking for some happiness, if only the damned authorities would leave them alone.

Why do so few people respect it when someone simply wants to be left alone?

(first entry)
Addendum, 2021: You know, I was kind of an idiot to never have made a pass at Kallie. One of many idiocies in a life that's been full of them.
And the article I mentioned from the Anderson Valley Advertiser, "at the back of the zine you're reading," is indeed at the back of the zine I'm holding. Haven't re-read it yet — it's long, and I'm in the wrong frame of mind — but I'll re-type and post it next.

“Would you write an account of who you are and how you came to be living in a bum hotel?”
I'd sent a copy of my zine to the publisher of a small-town newspaper nearby, the Anderson Valley Advertiser_, and that was the reply. Hmmm. I’d never tried summing myself up in one article, but that was the assignment._
Readers with long memories might recognize a sentence here and there from back issues of Pathetic Life_, but if you can’t plagiarize yourself, who can you plagiarize?_

I was one of them — a good Christian, registered voter, hard worker, young man with a promising future, sometimes a ladies’ man, always a fine boy from a traditional family.

Let me tell you about the family. They’re not crazy. They’re fairly normal, I think, and that’s what’s crazy.

My mother is a Christian, which is all you need to know about her, since that’s all she knows about herself.

My father was a hard worker like me, stubborn and smart, warmly aloof, always working extra hours at the office, so sometimes a stranger to his six kids.

Hazel, the oldest, eloped too young, and tried to kill herself during an argument with her husband a few years later. She almost succeeded, but instead of dying, she’ll never walk or talk again.

Katrina has a job she hates, takes drugs every weekend and occasionally sells the stuff. Her husband died while she was divorcing him, so she’s half a widow. Lately she’s been “living in sin” (says Mom) with her dealer.

Dick is a convicted child molester, I suspect, but who knows? Nobody is willing to say. Any time you want a family get-together to go absolutely quiet, just ask why Dick is in prison.

Clay and I were the closest, until Jesus came between us, and now he’s so Christian I don’t know him any more. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers — he looks exactly like my brother, but he’s completely changed.

Ralph is a petty thief who's not good at his job — he always gets caught. He’s been in and out of prison so many times, I’m not sure whether he’s in or out at the moment. In jail, he’s always very Christian. It helps with the parole board.

And then there’s me, the youngest, and the black sheep of our good Christian family.

When I became a man, I put away childish things, and Christianity was the first thing to go. God Almighty, what a silly concept! All around us there’s chaos and confusion and death and disease; I’ve seen a baby born without a brain, smelled gunshots on the sidewalk, known a woman whose face was covered with wart-like protrusions, watched a teenager die, and heard the music of Michael Bolton. There is no God. And if there was, He She or It should be condemned to burn in Hell, certainly not worshipped.

Later, I gave up on voting. I had always believed in democracy, worked for campaigns that seemed important, and my causes and candidates usually lost, but that’s not what disillusioned me. It’s that even when the good guys won, they were barely better than the liars and puds they'd replaced. No-one better is allowed on the ballot, though. Slowly I started to understand that there’s really no “lesser of two evils,” only evil in different forms and dosages. It hardly matters who wins and loses, because we the people always lose, and they the powerful always win. People who want to write the rules, I've decided, are exactly the people who shouldn't write the rules.

I’ve never had many friends, and eventually I noticed that fewer friends was better, so I've kept trying to drill down the number to zero. Most of my ‘friendships’ were shallow and superficial, people I went to ball games or bars with, sharing a laugh or a hamburger, but I didn’t know them and they didn’t know me and a hamburger tastes just as good alone. When the friends faded away, it was no great loss, and when only one or two friends remained, even they were getting on my nerves.

Likewise there’ve been lovers, thank you ma'am, but the legends of ‘happily ever after’ seem wildly exaggerated. “I love you,” I thought I heard her say. I said it too, and thought I knew what it meant. “Though you care about the strangest things, your politics are ass-backwards, your values are worthless, and your family is even stranger than mine, let’s get married.” With somewhat sweeter words I asked that question. We gazed deeply into each other’s eyes, saw nothing there, and walked away — a divorce without bothering with a wedding. Darling, I never knew you, and you never knew me. Rinse, lather, repeat. Presently I’m available, but not really looking.

For years I gave my job my best effort, shared bright ideas, put in extra hours, took projects home, and sincerely tried to be the employee I’d hire if I was in charge. For my dedication, I was laid off. The most brilliant workers (not me, to be clear) are ignored for promotions, while dimwitted young college kids or the boss’s son land the corner office, where they announce new policies that make the work more difficult, the company less profitable, and customers more frustrated, all while the padlock on the suggestion box slowly rusts. To survive, I’ve become the employee every company seems to want — I do what I’m told, without thinking or caring, and glance at the clock every few minutes.

One fine Sunday, after visiting my sister in the nursing home, declining the acid my other sister wanted to sell me, being nagged by my mother for not attending church that morning, and dreading the next day’s return to the office, I walked into my empty apartment and took a good look around.

I hated my life. It was time to put a bullet in my brain, or make some less fatal changes, as if my life depended on it. I began packing that night, and didn’t go to my job the next morning, or ever again. Goodbye, Seattle. I won’t miss the rain. Soon I was driving south on the freeway. Next stop, California.

Here in San Francisco, I believe in good pot at reasonable prices, though I haven’t found any lately. I believe in taking nothing seriously unless it’s impossible not to. I believe in helping others, if they need and deserve it and if I’m in a good mood. Mostly I believe in me, since I’m the only person I can count on.

It's just me, living in a dilapidated residential hotel, where I like to sit and blow bubbles out the window, onto the utterly normal people below.

Once, I was one of them — a good Christian, registered voter, hard worker, young man with a promising future, sometimes a ladies’ man, always a fine boy from a traditional family.

Now I’m none of the above. Once or twice a month, I call Mom to let her know I’m alive, but other than that I’m alone. God is only a cliché, something to holler when I hammer my thumb. I’m not registered to vote, so no matter which boobs get elected, I still feel clean. I have a few acquaintances, but no real friends. I’m having a lusty love affair with a tube of Vaseline. I have a job that sucks, same as the old job, but there’s an idea brewing that might maybe make that problem go away.

I’ve been told it’s a pathetic life, but it’s the life I’ve chosen, and it’s better than the life left behind. Sure, there’s nobody, and nothing much to believe in. No hopes and dreams, but damned few worries. These are by far the happiest days I’ve ever known. I’m enjoying it, and therein lies the meaning of life.

("bonus rant")

As I finished writing yesterday’s entry, a cockroach tickled me, crawling up my leg. I smashed it to smithereens on my kneecap, and injured myself in the process. After that I didn’t feel much like writing, so I didn’t write much. Just read, walked, and ate. Mostly ate.

Breakfast was a cheese omelet at Bon Ami, at Jones & O’Farrell. Everything was fine, and the potatoes were something special, fried in onions and cinnamon. The total was five bucks, including tip. Not bad. Better than the O'Farrell Cafe, so I might be switching loyalties.

Checked my mail, and stuffed it all into my backpack. Then I danced all the way home, asking strangers in the rain, “Have you seen Bradford Dillman?” “Do you know where Bradford Dillman is?”

I’ve been worrying about the guy. He used to be so ubiquitous in the movies and on TV, and I liked his slightly pompous persona, but I haven’t seen him in years. Here he is, under “noted personalities” on page 359 of my World Almanac. Says here, Mr Dillman is still alive. Nobody on the street had a clue, though — they all looked at me like I was nuts!

Lunch was two cheese sandwiches, and so were both dinners. Been doing cheese sandwiches at home for weeks now, almost exclusively. Part of my bachelor methodology is, if something tastes good, I’ll eat it again and again until the mere thought of it makes me want to vomit. Me and the cheese sandwiches haven’t reached that point yet.

I’m the same way with music. If a pop single gets my ear’s attention, I’ll play it until the grooves wear out of the vinyl. Or I did, when there was vinyl.

♦ ♦ ♦

In the mail was a long letter from Tim Ereneta, whose signature is sloppy so I might be misspelling his name. Sorry about that, Tim. Spent a lot of time reading and answering his letter, and I like that he's responding to various daily entries. It's like having Rex Reed review my life, like each day's a shitty movie that gets its own shitty review.

Anyway, with my remarks inserted after Tim's, it looks almost like a conversation. Not an interesting conversation, perhaps, for you, but it was interesting for me, so here it comes:

November 8. Election Day. I spent it as a precinct officer in my local polling station. That is, I crossed off addresses on a printout from 7 in the morning to 8 at night at a neighborhood fire station. Yes, and I volunteered to do it — well sort of. You get $53, less than minimum wage, but I knew the job would be a no-brainer.
Coolest thing about it: I got to find out who my neighbors are, match names with faces, with the nice houses and cruddy apartments, and I got to see everyone’s political affiliation. My particular precinct in Oakland is roughly 5:1:1 Democrats to Republicans to Green / Peace & Freedom / Independent. My neighborhood voted 80% against Proposition 187, which so skewed my idea of how things were going (“Look at how many Democrats are voting!”) that the actual election results not only depressed me for a month, but made me feel that working the polls, rather than being a job of civil pride, made me an accomplice to crimes against humanity.
So anyway, I understand your sentiment of trying to avoid thinking about this country. But — I disagree with you. There are reasons to spend ten minutes at the polls. Prop 186 [single-payer health care; failed —DH] was one — Damn, I was looking forward to being insured. Prop 187 [deny health care and education to illegal immigrants; passed] is another. Although I suppose it’s inevitable California will become a police state.
And yes, there was not a dime’s worth of difference between [Republican Pete] Wilson and [Democrat Kathleen] Brown, so I didn’t vote for ‘em. But some of the third party candidates are worth ten minutes of my time, and this year they got equal statements in the election pamphlet. Yes, I know that they have no money, no TV commercials, and zero chance of ever getting elected, but I vote for them anyway. I’d like our participatory democracy to work some day. Fat chance. But I keep up my end by participating. I’m not trying to convince you to vote, Doug… well, actually, yes I am.
But I’m me, you’re you. I’m not going to change your mind. I just wanted you to hear my perspective on it.

Fair enough, and I’m not trying to convince you not to vote. I’m a personal decision. Let me ask just one question about what you wrote, though: Why is it any of your business, let alone the state of California’s, what your neighbors’ political affiliations are? Where I’m from, Washington, voters just register as voters, not as Republicans or Democrats. Seems weird.

I’ll agree and expound on one thing you said: You’re an accomplice to crimes against humanity. Nothing personal, though. Consider that ghastly Prop 187, which says liberty and justice isn’t for all, but only for people born in the USA — even though you voted against it, the act of voting at all seems to imply that such insanity is open to rational discussion. “Do all humans deserve human rights?” is a question I wouldn’t dignify with an answer, so I didn’t vote.

November 15. My friend Anna works for Planned Parenthood, and she brought out a female condom to show us. The best thing about them: The brand name is ‘Reality’. The instructions are hilarious: “If Reality is uncomfortable, try using more lubrication.”
November 29 & December 4. You know how much a cheese omelet would cost if you made it yourself, at home? Not anywhere near six dollars, I can tell you. I can’t get more specific because I stopped buying eggs years ago. Although, Mr Cheese Omelet, while your hemorrhoids might have cleared up (Have they? You haven’t written about them lately) I fear for your cholesterol levels! Do you ever eat any vegetables?

“If Reality is uncomfortable, try using more lubrication.” Words to live by.

I make half-assed omelets at home sometimes, which involves emptying a can of mixed veggies into a plastic bowl of eggs and cheese and microwaving it all. It’s OK, but the microwave is all I have for cooking, and even that’s against the building rules. Can’t do the hash browns at all, and everything’s better at a good diner.

The ‘roids hardly ever bleed these days. Still itch now and then, but that can be cured with genuine Merrill’s brand suppositories.

December 15. What, do you tell the UC Theater that you’re coming, so they intentionally bring in a bad projectionist? I’ve never had a problem there, but then, I usually go to weekday matinees.

Maybe I’m just a picky bastard, Tim. The UC projection isn’t any worse than you’d find at a mall multiplex, where each projectionist tends eight screens and each screen is almost focused, almost framed, and the movie is Police Academy 12 so who cares anyway? That's why I don't go to the mall multiplexes, though.

When I'm at the movies, I want the focus sharp enough to count the sweat glands on Bogart’s nose, and I can never do that at the UC. I can count ‘em at the Roxie, Castro, Red Vic, Stanford, PFA, and any of the other rep or art houses I often attend.

December 26. You are a mean sonovabitch. I hate Barney, too, but still, you’re a mean sonovabitch.

Yup, I am. I could’ve just walked into the adjoining car and found an empty seat, in quiet Barney-free bliss. In my defense, two things: First, that kid sang her song a hundred times, non-stop and no exaggeration, so give her mother some of the blame, for allowing it and endangering everyone’s sanity. And second, I just don’t give a damn — I’m a mean sonovabitch.

Tim’s letter was twice as long as the above, and he also had plenty of kind things to say, but I hate reading letters in other people’s zines that say, “Your zine is great, blah blah blah,” so such sentiments get snipped away. Enjoyed all of it, though, Tim. Thanks for writing half my diary today.

Addendum, 2021: My perspective on voting has evolved since 1995. I still believe one vote makes no difference, but now I view it as entertainment, so I'm a registered and reliable voter.

Also, minor movie star Bradford Dillman exited stage left, but not until 2018.

Judith and I met for lunch at the Newbury Cafe in Berkeley, on Shattuck near Ashby. Their banana shakes are so thick they’re almost chewy, and I had a cheese omelet, of course — and it was superb.

So now I've met Judith, and she has a friendly aura. She’s more outgoing than I’ve ever been, even way back when I sometimes at least tried to interact with other humans. She had a quick repartee with some strangers at the swap meet in the BART lot, and the guy behind the counter at the Newbury knew her by name. She shouted once, at a friend across the street, and it was like a scene from a folksy family sit-com. "Hey, Mabel!" "Hey, Judith!"

She’s a people person, the opposite of me, but it was nice meeting her, and like my mom always urges, it’s good to come out of my shell once in a while. I don’t think Mom would like Judith, though. She can be outrageous, and my mom is more … 'rageous'.

The plan was, I was headed to a movie at the UC Theater. Judith didn’t want to see Seven Samurai (1954), but she rode along to do some shopping. We were a little vague on whether we might meet up gain after the movie. “Look for me," she said, "and maybe I’ll be there, but if I’m not don’t worry, just call it a day and head back to the city.”

Seven Samurai is a classic, an absolute must-see. It’s Akira Kurosawa’s most famous and best regarded work, and all the rave reviews aren't BS. It's about a Japanese farming village that’s bullied and looted by roving thieves every year at harvest time, so no matter how good their crop, they’re left with barely enough to survive until the next year, when they’ll be robbed again. After putting up with this for years, maybe generations, someone has a bright idea: Let’s hire free-lance samurai to defend the town.

It’s a rousing adventure, smart and thrilling and funny, as the townsfolk look for affordable warriors to hire, building toward the popcorn-munching action scenes. It's the UC Theater, though, so in the back of my mind I was wondering, are they going to screw this up? The film was focused and framed, which ought to go without saying but like I said, it’s the UC.

Just when I thought they’d done it right tonight, the strangest thing happened. There’d been several battles, samurai vs brigands (‘brigands’ being a word I only know from samurai movies; it means ‘bad guys’), and it looked like we were about to see the movie’s climactic battle. One of the villagers turned to the camera and shouted, “The brigands! The brigands!”

And suddenly, women were in the fields, and two of the warriors were wistfully looking back on everything they’d been through. The End.

Now wait one god damned minute. This was a movie I'd already seen, and I don’t have it memorized or anything, but last time and the time before, it didn’t switch so abruptly from the battle to a recollection of the battle. The theater’s program had promised that this was “the uncut version” of Seven Samurai, and I didn’t even know there was a “cut” version, but whatever I'd just seen was clumsily circumcised.

My guess as a movie guy is that either the print arrived with one reel missing, or the projectionist skipped a reel. I attended a movie once at the UC where the reels were shown in the wrong order, so them skipping a reel seems much more plausible.

I wanted to corner the manager and yell at him, but Judith was waiting in the lobby, and really, what’s the point of complaining? They’re not going to tell the crowd to sit down again, and then show us the reel they’d forgotten to screen — and even if they did, it wouldn’t quite be the same, you know? It's not a problem they could fix, so I walked over to Judith and said hey, and tried to switch from mighty pissed to semi-sociable. Not sure I pulled it off.

We ate at some place called Plearn Thai. I hadn’t eaten Thai food since a very brief period when I was a borderline yuppie, 15 or so years ago. The food was as spicy as I’d remembered, and pricier. Hell, the tip was more than I’d usually spend on a meal. It was better than edible, though, and only the second helping of fancy food I’ve had since moving to California three years ago, so my pauper’s papers are still intact.

Judith is… Judith. I like her, but she’s Mary Tyler Moore and I’m Quasimodo. I am socially disabled, normally abnormally withdrawn to the max, and she is bubbles of optimism and smiles and good manners and all that. Glad to meet her and nothing against her, and I’d willingly hang with her again if she wants, but eating two meals together in one day was one meal too many.

At home I checked my movie reference book, and it says that the uncut version of Seven Samurai runs 208 minutes. By my calculations, the movie I saw tonight was about 20 minutes short of that, depending on how long the intermission was. A movie reel runs about ten or eleven minutes, so I think we were shortchanged two reels, and also, screw the UC Theater.

Addendum, 2021: It's absurd, but 26 years later, the UC's destruction of Seven Samurai that night still pisses me off. The theater was operated by Landmark, a chain that was (or maybe still is?) pretty good as chains go, but it always seemed like they sent only their flunk-outs to work in Berkeley.
They shut down the UC Theater in 2001, just as Stephanie & I were leaving California, and the internet tells me that it's now a live music venue. Which seems like a better idea.

Here’s a workplace catastrophe: The company's legally-required inventory of merchandise was conducted a few weeks ago, but something’s gone screwy with the data. The details remain hush-hush, but according to a memo, "all departments are instructed not to submit final numbers at this time.”

Sounds serious, but I do not care. It's a problem for the company, not for me. All that matters to me is, the slight and barely noticeable ‘remodeling’ of our office is finished, so I was back at my counter-space this morning, which now has more electrical outlets and somewhat better lighting than before. It's the same countertop, though, and the same chair.

Also same as before, my chair is a little too far from Kallie, but close enough for Carlotta to talk dirty to me without anyone overhearing. She loves naughty talking, and she no longer shyly uses letters, C for cunnilingus like we're on Sesame Street. Today she said exactly what she meant, sometimes with hand gestures and sound effects.

She wanted to talk about men she’s seen masturbating in public — strangers and urban perverts — in a supermarket’s parking lot, once in high school, once in a movie theater, and twice on BART (one circumcised, she said, and the other not). Are there that many deviants and degenerates desperate to be caught, or was she exaggerating the count for my benefit? I guess pervs are a downside of being an attractive woman.

I am still mystified why Carlotta tells me these things, but when she does it's the next best thing to having a sex life, so — by all means, tell.

"Do you talk to other men about stuff like this?" I asked her, and tilted my head down the counter toward our co-worker Peter, and one of the male temps.

"I know you better than them," she said, "and you're more fun."

In a spirit of fun, then, I confessed to Carlotta that I’ve masturbated in some unusual places. Most men probably have, especially any man who claims he hasn’t. Decorum matters, though, so I’ve always made certain nobody could see or suspect what I was doing. Right now, for example, I'm typing this with just one hand, but I would never tell that to anyone.

When I nervously glanced at my computer or at a stack of unfinished work, Lottie put her hand on my chest, right under my neck, as we talked. It's not an erogenous zone or anything, but it’s an attention-getter. She also, just once, tapped my luxuriously soft belly to accentuate some point she was making. If getting attention is her goal, well, mission accomplished.

At other jobs, I’ve had disgusting conversations with other men, because men are disgusting, everyone knows that. It’s entirely different, though, when a gorgeous and unattainable woman whispers the word ‘sperm’ in my ear. It was a high point of my day, of my existence, but I still don't know... why me?

♦ ♦ ♦

Lottie and I took our afternoon break together, and she hesitated before broaching another delicate subject. Her reticence worried me — without warning this woman barrels straight into a conversation about seeing men and boys whack their willies, so what’s so delicate that she's unsure whether to say it?

Carlotta thinks I should ask Kallie out. On a date.

After ascertaining that bringing it up was Carlotta’s idea, and not any kind of a ‘message’ from Kallie, I gave Lottie the same answers I’ve given myself — obviously, I’m fat and smelly and accustomed to my solitude and wary of rejection, but also ya shouldn’t date people from work, and Kallie and I are just friends, and she’s too spiritual for me and I hate all that cosmic crap.

“Excuses, excuses,” Carlotta said.

“Maybe,” I replied, “but if there’s ever anything between Kallie and I, Kallie would have to make the first move.” I hope Carlotta relays that message, but I didn’t ask her to.

The world ended this afternoon, judging from the frantic executives at the office. A few of them were spotted literally running down the hallway. If it was a movie, they might have jumped out the windows.

I couldn’t keep from snickering, though.

Turns out that the annual inventory is all screwed up. The problem dates back to December, when one or several temps made the same data-entry mistake every ten seconds, for the entire time they worked here — weeks, at least. The screw-up might have been due to bad training (which smells like Jennifer to me, and she's sweating) or it might have been malicious (I'm hoping for malicious).

Accidentally or on purpose, though, the upshot is the same — the electronically scanned count of everything from the shoe department, "and possibly multiple other departments," has been rendered "unreliable."

Obviously, this is worse than the war in Bosnia.

The inventory is one of the basics of "generally accepted accounting principles," and it's a key factor in evaluating what the company is worth, what taxes must be paid, and whether there's a profit or a loss. It's required to be right, but our inventory is apparently shit.

What went wrong? Temps went wrong. I don’t want to slam the temps too hard, because I used to be one and will be again, but temps always know they’ll be gone soon, so temps have even less of a commitment to the company than I do, which is microscopic. Temps have no particular motivation to do the job right.

It shouldn't take an MBA to figure out that if the work is important, employees should do it. And this is literally work that my co-workers and I used to do, before the last few rounds of layoffs, and before the company’s brilliant decision to save money by having temps do the inventory counts and inputs, instead of employees.

When we did it, we always did it right, but they brought in temps to do it instead. Now there'll need to be a do-over of some of the inventory, possibly much or even all of the inventory. In a company the size of this one — a Fortune 500 company — that's an expensive proposition. Oh well.

♦ ♦ ♦

I’m just marking time at this job, waiting to be replaced by a temp myself, and a different memo this morning is the clearest indication yet that dismissal day is drawing near: Babs’ boss (see August 24 and December 20) has been promoted to senior vice president.

That's half a click above being a junior vice president, half a click below being a junior president — which is all nonsense to me — but apparently his promotion is a Big Deal, since the memo was sent company-wide.

He's a bulb so dim you’d need a flashlight to find his face at noon on a sunny day, and now he's my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss's boss, when yesterday he was merely my boss's boss's boss's boss. There’s more to the story, but first the dim bulb needs a name, so let’s call him what he is: Gray.

In a company as shrouded from honesty as this one, memos and press releases can be assumed to be bullshit. You come to trust certain sectors of the grapevine more than anything issued on letterhead, and a reliable source has told me that when the axe fell for several of my co-workers in July, Gray had proposed laying off everyone in my department. He was overruled by his boss, so only five out of nine of us were taken to lunch and shown the door.

Gray’s boss — the only executive who understood that work doesn’t get done without workers — has left the building. Gray is sitting in that chair now, and having been promoted, he will need to make a bold statement soon. I suspect that my name will be between the commas in Gray's bold statement — more layoffs to briefly boost the bottom line, and there’ll be nobody to tell him 'no'.

If I can find my balls (they’re around here somewhere) perhaps I’ll make a bold statement of my own, before he makes his.

♦ ♦ ♦

Today, there was an interesting conversation with Kallie and Carlotta. I sighed sadly after typing that sentence, and before typing this one: Loneliness is everywhere, I guess. Kallie told us that she’s signed up for a computer dating club, and she's embarrassed and nervous about it. She's meeting someone on Thursday after work, and it'll be her first "real date" in two years.

Kallie is a quality human. She deserves to be loved, and finding someone shouldn't require her to do business with some shady, overpriced matchmaker service.

We all do what we have to do, though, so the three of us traded stories of our searches for romance — Kallie about selecting men from mug shots and videotapes, me about placing ads in the personals section of an alt-weekly, while Carlotta just listened and nodded. She had no sad stories to offer, since eye-popping beautiful women don’t need such desperate measures to get a date.

♦ ♦ ♦

Speaking of loneliness, Margaret called again, in a smoochie-woochie mood. She told me she loves me, can’t wait to see me, etc, and I didn't know what to say to such extra mushy mush, but I didn’t say anything encouraging.

"The feeling isn’t mutual," is what I should’ve said when she said "I love you," but my firmest statement was, “I’m not sure about you visiting, Maggie.” My words fell like snowflakes in summertime, and she's still planning to visit soon, but the good news is that she'll be staying with her sister in Livermore, instead of with me.

Maggie says she loves me, but what does she know about me? I’m a guy who’s usually treated her nice, that's all. We've made each other laugh, and made each other sweaty, but honestly, there are people at work who know me better than Maggie does — Kallie and Stanley, almost definitely, and Carlotta, maybe. Anyone who’s read this zine knows me better than Maggie knows me.

Every time I’ve tried to show Maggie who I really am, she’s been annoyed. Last time I tried showing her, she beat me up. When she told me today that she loves me, what I heard is that she doesn’t, and probably can't.

It started when Peter mentioned sending Gray a congratulatory e-mail, and Jennifer said she’d sent one, too. Then Darla said she thought it was a good idea, “to show that we’re all on his side” after his promotion. And suddenly, clackity clack, everyone started banging out e-mails to Gray.

It frankly soured my stomach, and made me think a little less of the few people I work with that I actually like. Everyone’s on edge and worried about their jobs, sure, but (a) sending a stupid e-mail won’t make him decide not to lay you off, and (b) how much ass can one person kiss anyway?

So everyone in the ranks sent Gray a nice e-mail, and everyone in management either e-mailed or called or sent him a Hallmark card. I am pretty sure I'm the sole exception, because I have nothing to say to an empty suit.

♦ ♦ ♦

Here’s a belated punchline to the tale I told on November 16, when there was a fire at work, but no alarm, and no public-address announcement. The building was eventually evacuated because of smoke in the air, but without an alarm it was all haphazard and scary, and our section was the last the leave.

The day after the fire, I wrote a semi-pissy e-mail to the company’s suggestion box, which I assumed would either be ignored or get me fired. Well, since November my e-mail has traveled the world — the ‘suggestion box’ staff sent it to Personnel (and ain’t it great that a pissy ‘suggestion’ is forwarded straight to the people who basically handle terminations?), Personnel sent it to Security (like I’m a bomb threat?), Security sent it to the store’s assistant manager and CC’d some bigwig I’ve never heard of, the bigwig sent it to someone in New York City, and New York forwarded it back to the western regional office — which is where I work, atop the downtown San Francisco store, so my e-mail finally landed on Babs’ desk and got me called into her office.

I’m not fired, though. Instead she asked me to join the safety committee, because she thinks I care about safety. I don’t care about safety, Babs — I just don’t want to be burned up if the building burns down. But I nodded and said sure, and now I’m on the safety committee.

It’s probably bullshit. It pays nothing extra, but the meetings are on company time, and maybe there’ll be cookies. My first meeting will be in three weeks, if I’m still working here then — which is always an ‘if’, and it’s feeling increasingly iffy lately.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kallie is anxious about her next computer matchmaker date, tomorrow night, and Carlotta’s joking advice was not to wear a bra. Kallie has ample bosoms, so it’s a joke and they both giggled. Lottie’s are much more petite, and she said something about “the pencil test,” and they giggled again so I asked what the hell is the pencil test?

It’s a woman thing. Kallie says, put a pencil between breast and ribs, and if the pencil doesn’t fall out then you need a bra. Not sure if they were serious or kidding, but I tried the test then and there, and by golly, I need a bra.

♦ ♦ ♦

After work I went to Kaplan’s Army/Navy to buy a few t-shirts, and of course they make everyone check their backpacks behind the counter. On the way home I realized I’d forgotten my backpack, behind their counter. Fuck all. They close at 6:00, so I can’t fetch it until tomorrow.

Pretty sure it’ll be OK, but worry worry worry. There’s almost $200 worth of stamps in the top left zipper pocket, postage paid on my lunch hour today, and if those stamps are gone I don’t know how I’ll get this issue into the mail. I have a little bit of 'money cushion', but never two hundred bucks.

It’s a paradox — the kindest people are the most insecure, while the world’s biggest bastards seem to have no internal fears at all.

Kallie is one of the nice people, so she was nervous all day about her date tonight. She looked great, in fancy duds that showed an inch glimpse of cleavage (first time I’ve seen any of it) but she was rattled up tight by the end of the day. I said a few corny lines that I thought or hoped might soothe her worries, wished her good luck, and then she was gone.

Me, I haven’t had a hot date in a long while, and haven’t ever been a hot date. I’m sure if I was meeting a fine mamacita like Kallie for dinner, I’d be going just as crazy as she went.

But also, it was amusing to watch Kallie freak out, because gads, I’m a terrible person.

♦ ♦ ♦

Returned to the Army/Navy store during my morning break, and everything was intact in my backpack, of course. So here’s a sincere plug for Kaplan’s fine dry goods and outdoor equipment, home of quality merchandise at reasonable prices, and employees who won’t pillage your stuff if you forget your backpack.

♦ ♦ ♦

My evening was probably more serene than Kallie’s. I yielded to a strange desire to see two Hollywood movies for one bargain price, with Spanish subtitles, at the Tower cinema. Laughed my dang fool head off at Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, and Wesley Snipes in Drop Zone. Both were your basic Hollywood crap, but work leaves me mindless so it was a perfect fit.

Then I waited 2½ eons for the #14 home, and my nose and earlobes were frostbit by the time a bus came. And damn, it was loaded with a gnarly zooful of tattooed and pierced purple-haired passengers straight from some bar where I’d never want a drink. Straight outta hell, man, even for Muni. I forecast recurring nightmares starring the guy with albino eyes and no shoes, using a Crocodile Dundee knife to clean under his toenails…

Addendum, 2021: Bad news and bummer. Kaplan's closed in 2013.

Today was a pretty good day at work! A bug in the software made most of the programs we use inoperative, and the computer experts are working on it, but meanwhile I may have done about fifteen minutes of work in eight hours.

Instead, all the people I like — Lottie, Kallie, me, and sometimes Peter — loitered and chatted most of the day. Kallie had more date updates, Lottie had funny stories when Kallie was around and sexy stories when she wasn’t, and Peter arm-wrestled with a temp, and lost.

For a change, though, I won’t report on Carlotta’s silly conversations. What I’ve noticed is, when I come home and type up whatever she said that seemed risqué, it gets me going again, but at the moment I’m tired and not in the mood. Anyway, if you’ve read any of it, today was just more of the same.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kallie says her date went well, and the guy was a perfect gentleman, charming and funny and... yes, I wish it was me, but I'll never let on.

She’s seeing him again tonight, so I guess it went really well. Her date is at 7:30, and my movies don’t start until 8:00, so Kallie and I did dinner at Tina’s on Eddy Street — omelets and laughs and the widest-ranging conversation we’ve ever had. We confessed that we both dislike parties, first dates, almost any kind of social situation, Jennifer, our jobs, and our mothers’ nagging. I even found a hole in the conversation where I could gently wedge in that I rarely if ever make the first move to ask a woman out, even a woman I might like. Hint hint.

Then we said good night, and she bused to her home for her second date with Prince Charming, while I strolled over to check the maildrop.

If I let myself think about it too much, I could be depressed that this nice lady is tiptoeing toward a relationship with some other man, but of course it’s my own damned fault. I hesitate. I say nothing. I remain alone, and apparently that’s by choice. My head is a complicated place, and I get lost up there, frequently.

Oh, and everything about my cheese omelet was fine, except the potatoes, which tasted like they'd been frozen and reheated. The tab with tip was five dollars. I’ve had better, and cheaper, but Tina’s is with easy walking distance of the office, which makes it convenient for a not-date after not-work.

♦ ♦ ♦

In the mailbag, came a surprise from Martina Eddy of the zine Big Secrets. She sent a tiny porcelain figurine of a blond blue-eyed white girl, and at the bottom it says, “Made in occupied Japan.” It’s both beautiful and sad, and I thank you very much, Martina, sincerely. But there’s no place in my apartment (or in my life) for such a lovely and fragile thing. I’m a big ox, and if it put it on a shelf I’ll accidentally jostle it off, probably soon, and it’ll be shattered.

My mom, though, has an intense fascination with all things Japanese, so I’ll give it to her as a present when she visits in a few weeks.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tonight was another fabulous show at the Victoria, with a big and enthusiastic crowd — nearly a sell-out, which I hope means they’ll be unlocking the doors and showing more movies, more often.

The program began with Threshold of Tomorrow (1964), an awful educational film that’s nothing but overripe PR for its sponsor, the Masonite Corporation. Middle-aged white guys with glasses and crew-cuts and pocket protectors explain all about leading edge technology and modern engineering. The robotesque narrator explains that forests are a valuable asset, which the men (and one woman) of Masonite make into lumber, cardboard, laminated paneling, pegboard, mulch, charcoal briquettes, livestock feed, and much much more, pouncing on virgin forests, putting every tree to profitable use, and “improving on nature.” I’m certain I saw this film in my 7th grade science class, and even then I knew it was absolute shit.

Zardoz (1974) begins with a flying godhead imploring some savages to “Go forth and kill.” Then this idol spits a thousand guns out of its mouth, and the killing begins. It’s not a comedy, but as stupid science fiction it’s deliriously demented, profoundly silly, and never threatens to make the slightest sense. Future science seems to understand Sean Connery’s erections, and it may be your only chance to see him in a white wedding gown. Worth noting, the theater’s air was thick with pot as soon as Zardoz started, so if you’re taking my advice on what movies to see, it might be better under the influence.

Speed Scene is a short 1969 documentary that takes a morose look at the serious problem of amphetamine abuse. If anyone hooked on speed could sit still long enough to watch it, he or she would probably walk straight to a detox center, where, of course, the doors would be locked and the windows boarded up, because this is America and we don’t like to help people who need help. The moviemakers could’ve used some uppers themselves, though, as visually and cinematically it’s a boring preach-piece. You could call it a motion picture, technically, but there’s hardly any motion; it’s almost entirely talking heads.

I was getting drowsy, with extremely low expectations for the evening’s last movie, so I seriously considered leaving, but I stayed, with no regrets. What they showed us was a psychotronic masterpiece, and it was frickin’ awesome. Do you remember thinking in high school, or maybe yesterday at work, that the world would be a better place if someone would eliminate a few of the many assholes and idiots? Well, check your scruples at the door and revel in that feeling.

In Massacre at Central High (1976), a pasty-faced gang of four rules the school like “a little league gestapo,” until our adolescent hero decides to take them on, and take them out. It ain’t Room 222, but Massacre has everything you could want without admitting you want it: violent revenge, sexploitation, a dreadful theme song, and yes, even foul language.

It also has some very imaginative murder techniques. There aren’t any gunshots in this massacre, just plenty of clever ways to kill. Another nice touch is that there are no teachers, no classes, no hints of education at all, and no parents, no preachers, no police, no authority figures of any kind until the inevitable sirens in the distance at the end. It’s just kids being kids, running amok.

And in a depressingly true-to-life plot twist, once the bad guys are dead, the movie’s not even half over, because a new crop of crap rises to the top of the school’s society, necessitating another round of elimination. So the moral of the story is, sure, killing cretins might be fun, but it only clears the way for the next battalion of bastards to assume command. Sigh. I sadly put away my fantasies of death and destruction, and picked up my scruples again on the way out.

Stanley and I met at the Tennessee Grill on Taraval, for an early lunch. He’d told me the place is a great, cheap diner, and that was no lie.

“Forget everything you know about salads,” he said, as he showed his technique for stacking a small plate and turning their $1.99 single-serving salad bar into a meal. Some of this I knew, but some of it’s new wisdom:

The key to a bargain salad, Stanley taught and I watched, is that lettuce is a vastly overrated member of the salad. You want to fill yourself up, don’t start with loads of lettuce and add a few frills. Do the opposite: Stock up on the bulky vegetables instead, with *maybe a little lettuce on the side. Select the items you want, of course, but choose them with structural integrity in mind. Cottage cheese, for example, should be at the edge of the plate, where it can support other stuff piled on top.

All this was kinda like we were doing the Kwai Chang Caine & Master Po routine, but Stanley’s salad stood 5½ inches tall, quite an architectural achievement. Mine wss about an inch and a half shorter, but hey, salads aren’t usually my thing, and it was enough to fuill me up.

At the Tennessee, this cheapo salad comes with a mini-loaf of sourdough bread, plenty of butter and jam, and a glass of water that — unlike many restaurants’ water — tasted like water. Lunch for two bucks, and it was a good lunch!

Stanley paid the balance due for his van that I sold him last month. He’s gotten it running again, and it was nice to see the old girl. After lunch, and after he’d driven away in the van that used to be mine, I walked around the neighborhood for a while.

I don’t get out to Taraval much, so it was new to me. There are lots of little shops where I didn’t spend anything, including an office supply store. I love office supply stores — there’s always cool stuff — but at this one I watched an old lady say “ledger paper” three times, then explain what it is, to a teenage clerk who shrugged and said, “We don’t carry it.” Well, I don’t need ledger paper, but I also don’t need an office supply store that doesn’t know what it is, so toodle-doo.

At the library branch, their hours were posted so big, my nearsighted eyes could read the sign from across the street, but the hours are like 2PM-6PM, three days a week. With hours that minimal, what’s the point of even pretending it’s a branch of the library? Libraries should be open and circulating books *at least 10-12 hours every day, but that would require taxes and rich people don’t like paying taxes, so the purpose of the library is instead keeping the books locked up and out of anybody’s hands.

♦ ♦ ♦

Coming up Ellis Street after riding the L train back, some yuppie going the same direction as me walked into my next footstep on the sidewalk, stopping me cold. It was just a moment’s irritation, easily forgotten, or it would’ve been, but while I was softly cursing the back of his head, a could of his tobacco swirled into my face. And not even cigarette tobacco, but some horrid stinking cigar smoke. So…

When he was a few steps ahead of me, I shot a well-aimed loogie between his shoulder blades onto the back of his suit jacket. Nice shot, I thought to myself, and he didn’t even break stride. He just kept walking, like the important man he no doubt is — an important man with a lump of dried snot on his suit.

I don’t like important men.

Then I stepped back into my regal dump, stripped naked, and read and wrote and napped, and looked out the window.

Addendum, 2021: It's unrelated to this particular day's entry, but wow it's wistful, re-typing and posting these last few entries of January 1995.
It was an ordinary weekend day, not at all bad, and I still remember the salad. And later, I remember thinking as I fell asleep, I am so damned alone in the world, and the weekend's half over so I'm already halfway back to that job that I hate...
I didn't write about the downsides very often, because thinking too much about the blues, or writing about the blues, only makes the blues bluer. But I knew, some things needed to change.

My ears are plugged with foam rubber to blot out the screams — so many screams coming in through my window, like a nightmare in daylight.

It’s only football, though. I’m not watching the Super Bowl, of course — no TV, and no interest — but the mobs of cheering sports fans reach right through the ether and slap me in the ears, over and over. Hoots and hollers and honking horns burst through the glass, from neighbors in the building and the building across the alley, and from too many bars on this block.

Judging from the volume, I’d guess the 49ers are way ahead.

♦ ♦ ♦

It’s a little after five in the afternoon as I’m typing this, and I’ve spent the day going through the mail, and writing a few letters. Yeah, I do occasionally write letters back to people. It’s a mighty rare moment though, so don’t get your hopes up. Keep those cards and letters coming, I love ‘em all — even the hate mail — but don’t expect a reply.

There’s lots more love and like mail than hate mail, so what follows is not a random sample. The angry letters are just more interesting, that's all.

We’ll start with mystery mail from Don Stevens, CPCU, of Escondido, California. No, I don’t know what CPCU stands for, but Mr Stevens sent an envelope which contained:

• a two-page photocopied article from the Escondido Council for Self-Esteem (?)

• four pages from a book on the Shroud of Turin

• a newspaper’s review of the book A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by Karen Armstrong

• and ten 32¢ stamps.

There wasn’t a note in the package, and only the stamps made sense. I did the math, and 10 x 32¢ = $3.20, two dimes more than the asking price for this zine, so presumably he wanted a copy. I was feeling like a stinker, though, or maybe my powers of telepathy were flickering, but instead of sending the zine I used a few of the stamps to pay for my envelope and my annoyance, and sent everything he’d sent back to him — without a note, same as his package for me.

That was a week ago. In today’s mail, Don responded with:

• a copy of something about true love being based on your date of birth

• a photocopied letter to an astronaut (“Dear astronaut,”)

• a couple of pages from a book called Please Understand Me

• and this time, an actual note from Don Stevens, CPCU:

Hey, Pathetic. Thanks for all the great material, especially the stamps.

—Futility Enterprises

OK, Don. We battled, but you won fair and square. A copy of my zine is in the mail to you.

Killed a couple of hours of my own pathetic life reading your issue 5… Yes, the [British] government does indeed tell us which books and zines we can read and receive. EISOC, Everyone Is Doing Outrageous Sex, being the latest one to be seized and destroyed by Customs and Excise. Get this: They send you a letter saying they’re going to destroy what they’ve confiscated, unless you object. And if you object? They prosecute you! Hey, democracy; I love it too…
—Bruce at Bypass zine
Your zine is funny, and I could even tolerate your sort of hateful attitude, but your attacks on other zines makes me wonder. It’s almost like you think you can build up your own zine by ripping apart other people’s zines...
—Anne Alvarez

Anyone who thinks my zine is awful gets no argument from me. I’m puzzled when anyone pays for it, and amazed when someone pays a second time — as you did, Anne. But my habit of calling shit shit in the zine reviews certainly isn’t zine envy, or any other complicated psychological canard.

I write rotten reviews of zines I think are rotten. Simple as that. And I don't even know what reviews pissed you off — looking over the past few issues, most of my reviews seem favorable to me. Maybe they seem brutal because what most zines call “zine reviews” are just a series of puffy pats on the back for their zine buddies.

My reviews are my honest opinions, and in my opinion, not every zine ever published is worth reading. If you disagree, think I’ve been overly harsh with a particular zine, send for that zine — I dare you.

Thank you for the sample issue you sent so promptly. I enjoyed most of it but I’m offended by your ‘review’ of a movie [December 18] wherein you gloated over the deaths of several Drug Enforcement Agency officers. You said you have “a right to smoke, snort, or inject” anything you want? I’ve heard people say legalize marijuana, but are you really for legalizing everything? That’s lunacy.
Whatever you are for or against can’t be more important than the lives of innocent men and women doing their job, enforcing the law of the land. Like it or not our elected representatives have decided that certain drugs are illegal. I strongly doubt the wisdom of legalizing drugs, especially hard drugs, but if you disagree you should work within the system to have those laws changed, but to “enthusiastically clap” when policemen are shot and killed is un-American and sick…
—Phil O’Conner

Those were fictional cops, Phil. But sure, let’s do this:

I am generally a good citizen — haven’t killed anyone, don’t do much shoplifting, etc — but on my shelf is a small quantity of marijuana. I don’t imbibe very often but it’s nice to know it’s there if I’m bored on the weekend, and I torched up while reading your letter. Why that should bother you, or President Clinton, why anyone on Earth but me should give a damn, I dunno.

So you're right, I support the legalization of all drugs, but no, I’m not working within the system to have the laws changed. The system’s sole purpose is to grind dissent to nothingness, so I prefer keeping my distance from the beast.

DEA narcs have a job to do, yes. Their job is to find me, arrest me, and incarcerate me, so I can rot in prison and be raped daily for the rest of my life. That’s their sworn duty, the career they’ve chosen, and they’re not my heroes. What they do for a living is deny people their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, but I’m un-American for opposing that? Bite me.

Addendum, 2021: The final score of Super Bowl MCMXCV was San Francisco 49, San Diego 26. Yay.

This is San Francisco, where having a car is more bother than it’s worth. It's much easier to walk, bus, and train, so I don’t drive and don’t even own a car.

One of the best things about being car-free is that I rarely have to deal with the police, or with DMV wanna-be cops. There are no speed traps for pedestrians, no sobriety checkpoints, and you don’t get a ticket for having a ripped back pocket.

Today, though, as I checked the mail and came home for lunch, the city was having its huge 49ers victory parade down Market Street. I counted 17 cops on my three-block walk — far too many, in my opinion. It was a happy crowd, a crime spree wasn’t about to break out. The cops were only there to ring up overtime pay.

I watched one especially pissy cop at Powell & Ellis, who was directing traffic, forcing drivers to turn right onto Ellis when they wanted to turn left. Yet despite his whistle, gun, and incomprehensible contortions, a few drivers still tried to turn left — which is, after all, perfectly legal unless the football team won the Super Bowl the day before.

It's an unexpected situation, understandably confusing, but when drivers took a few seconds too long trying to make sense of his flailing arm signals, this cop screamed at them. Two cars in a row, he slapped the roof over the driver’s head, yelling profanities loud enough to be heard half a block away, even over all the screaming football loonies. “No, God damn it," he shouted, "you’re not going left — you’re going right right right for Christ’s sake!”

It was kinda funny, and if I’d had longer, I would’ve brought down a chair from my hotel room to watch Officer Frenzy, but it was lunch and I had to get back to work. In addition to being funny, though, it also wasn’t funny at all.

That cop was screaming. Red-faced. Blood vessels pulsing. Furious. If he burns his bacon that bad over the stress of directing traffic, what’s he going to be like when it’s just you and him without sidewalks packed with witnesses? He isn’t a cop who’ll protect you, he’s a cop you’ll need protection from. And he’s a cop who ought to not be a cop.

♦ ♦ ♦

Let there be zine reviews! As always, I’ll review any and all zines received, at least once, so please send me free stuff. Be forewarned, though, I’m genetically predisposed to hate pretensions poetry, political or spiritual rant zines, intentionally obtuse crap, and anything done with half effort.

A Shattered Mind #5, $1 from Jerianne, ██████████, Martin TX 38237. Divorced at 20, Jerianne writes an intense heartfelt rant about love gone wrong, and damn, it hurts and you can’t help soaking up the emotions. There are also lots of zine reviews, generally positive. Me, I’ve seen so many lousy zines I’m skeptical when a critic doesn’t rip something to shreds now and then, but I’m not ripping A Shattered Mind. It’s pretty good.

Bitchin’ About Film School #1, $1? From Gretchen Jacobsen, ███████████████, Chicago IL 60657. Greta is going to film school, and bitchin’ about it. Hence the title. She writes about Martin Scorsese worship, and doing drudge work as an unpaid intern. It’s a mighty quick read, so maybe she’s planning a career in short subjects, but if you have a buck to spare you could do worse. I liked the centerfold, Jane Campion in ladies’ underwear, because the more I think back on it, the more The Piano was sexist rot (but that’s me talking, not the zine).

Crematorium #4, 55¢ SASE from ████████████, Niles OH 44446. Cut’n’paste graphics, borrowed text, and some suspected instant writing that would be better with a rewrite. I liked the commentary on Miss America, and the fast food comparisons, but it all has a very spur-of-the-moment feel, as if the authors started from scratch and gave themselves an hour to make a zine.

Donut Frenzy #4, 75¢ from ██████████, St Paul MN 55104. This is your quintessential quirky zine with a clever concept — donut worship, essentially. Donut dreams, donut philosophy, donut shop reviews, donut ads too funny to be true, a map of better donut merchants in greater St Paul, letters about donuts, and donut shops visited on vacations to Sweden and my own San Francisco — hey, I’ve had donuts from some of these shops, and found the reviews insightful.

Snake Oil #3, $2 from ███████████████, Dallas TX 75214. Laughing at TV preachers and arch-fundamentalist Christians is always fun, and that’s what Snake Oil is all about. Here’s a list of snake-handling churches, and preachers whose ministries are built around their physical deformities. Good sick fun, and it adds to the zine’s credibility that it’s not really hostile to Christianity. In fact, the publisher could well be a Christian. Reverent laughs.

You’re Gonna Make It After All #1, $1? From Blue Chevigny, ██████████, New York NY 10025. This is “a zine o’ love about The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a topic I haven’t given much thought to in a while, but that show certainly was great. The character of Mary on prime time TV was a revolutionary figure, and this zine makes me miss and re-respect the show. Articles about the show’s love triangles, understanding Sue Ann Nivens, and spotting Valerie Harper climbing into a cab. Me, I always wanted to be Murray, but deep down inside I know I’m Ted.

Pimples, man. When is the end of pimples? Had pimples in my Wonder years, but by my 20s I’d hoped they’d go back to high school and leave my face alone. Instead they keep coming, one at a time, maybe on my butt instead of my face, but relentlessly, and lately in the strangest places. Right now there's a juicy blackhead growing on my left gonad. Thought it was a flea bite it scratches so, but I lifted and looked and it’s hello zitty. That's one I won’t be squeezing.

♦ ♦ ♦

At the Castro, Myra Breckinridge (1970) was a complete camp-out, one of the weirdest tales ever told by a major studio, wherein a movie nut has a sex change operation. Tom Selleck services Mae West, and later she sings a couple of wacky songs. On screen, everyone’s emotions are reflected in clips from even older movies, and in the audience — this being the Castro neighborhood — there’s talking back and and ample drag.

The entire cast exuberantly overacts, except for Rex Reed of all galactic possibilities, who’s perfectly plausible as the pre-operative Myron Breckinridge. I only knew him as a movie review byline; who knew Reed was even an actor? And who would’ve guessed that after having his penis and testicles removed, a vagina installed, and gallons of hormones pumped into his/her blood, Rex Reed could become Raquel Welch?

Before the second feature, we were treated to an ersatz and impromptu fashion show, as a parade of painted ladies strutted up and down the aisles to whistles and applause. This is the city, folks. If you’re reading this anywhere else and maybe enjoying the stories, maybe you’re not where you belong.

The second feature was Mommie Dearest (1981), and the theater was packed, even the balcony. I’ve seen a lot of Joan Crawford’s melodramatic movies, often there in my usual chair at the Castro, where the mostly gay crowd always loves her butchy bitchiness, but her real story — at least, this is purported to be her real story — is even more melodramatic than Mildred Pierce or most of her other movies. Faye Dunaway plays Joan, who’s not too nice to her daughter Christina, and it’s all fabulously overwrought with inner and outer turmoil.

Clearly, the Crawford of this movie, based on her daughter’s non-fiction book, was sorta psychotic with her kids, but no more so than you’d often see in a random lower- to middle-class household. My mom isn’t a screaming boozer like Dunaway’s Crawford, and she never beat us like that, but I’ve known neighbor kids who had it worse than poor little Christina.

Which is not to be dismissive — quite the contrary. I’m not saying ‘so what’, I’m saying ‘this is awful but it’s everywhere’.

It was a grand double feature, but it’s perhaps impossible to report it in writing, or recreate it anywhere else. The Castro is unique. Everyone in the sold-out crowd wanted to be Joan or Rex, Christina or Raquel. Whenever the dialogue grew especially arch and catty, which was almost always, hundreds of voices might recite the script. By the end of the second movie, when Christina had grown up enough to realize fight back against her monstrous mother, I was enjoying the spectacle in the theater more than even the spectacle on the screen.

San Francisco, man. This is my home town.

♦ ♦ ♦

Postscript, written the next night: It’s Wednesday, hours after work. The office is closed, and I’m about to return to the building to clean out my desk. Today was my last day there, though Darla doesn’t know it yet. Nobody does. The details are too complicated and there’s not enough space left to explain it here, and anyway I'm in no mood, so buy next month’s issue, ya cheapskate.

For now, please add a serious and somewhat desperate tone of voice as you read this final paragraph: I have almost no money, no source of income, no job prospects, and frankly no interest in looking for another job, so things could get dicey. If anyone reading this zine could offer bargain housing (say, a closet big enough to fit a fat guy?) or any kind of work here or near San Francisco or — fuck it — anyplace on Planet Earth, I’d love to hear from you. My number is (415) ██-███.