plutherus

So, I'm a decent-looking, sensitive guy who lives alone with two cats. I recently moved to San Francisco, a city I think is absolutely wonderful. I generally dress nicely and have some fashion sense. I took care in arranging my furniture and other interior decoration so my apartment would look nice. And I absolutely love musical theater.

I don't know why half the people I know think I'm gay....

Yesterday, I went out to Target on my lunch break (one BART stop down from where I work) and, among other things, purchased a chair. One of those new-fangled folding nylon-and-aluminum camping chairs. The chair comes in a large nylon sack, a long, thin, vaguely cylindrical shape, with a large shoulder strap. The same sack could easily be used to carry a rifle, which I assume is what someone was thinking when they called the BART police on me.

So I get off at the Pleasant Hill station, to be met by two police officers. One of them asks me what I have in the bag. I unsling it from my back, point to the large decal on the side that says "Chair" and I answer him, "Chair."

The other cop immediately starts laughing, which seems to annoy the first one. He asks me to open the bag, so I take out the chair and unfold it. To prove that it really is a chair, I then sit down in it. Realizing it has a drink holder in one arm, I tell them that if they'll give me a beer, I'll demonstrate the drink holder as well. I am informed that it will not be necessary. They apologize for the inconvenience, and explain that someone had called them anonymously from one of the other cars to report "a suspicious character" carrying a bag.

The moral of the story is, if you're going to be carrying a rifle on BART, put it in a dufflebag rather than a rifle-sized bag. My duffle could easily hold a few rifles, and I've never been stopped for carrying it on the train.

For some strange reason, my computer decided to turn on Mr. Rogers this morning. I must have set the recorder wrong or something. The weird thing about it, though, is that, laying there half asleep, listening to it for half an hour before I got up, when the final song came on, all about the joys and challenges and wonders about a Whole New Day, I actually found myself eager to get up and see what I could learn and do today.

I wonder if I can program it to turn it on on purpose every morning?

Well, I'm back. Unbattered, unbruised, and not even a drop of teargas. Despite the Chartreuse terrorist alert (ore whatever colour it was), the police didn't start anything at the protest. Huge crowd, I have no way of estimating how many, but I've heard estimates between 30,000-100,000. Frankly, from where I was 10,000 or 100,000 would all look the same to me. Seas of people stretching for many blocks.

I left my apartment about 11:30 this morning to go meet the environmentalists at 11. (Yeah, OK, so I was running a little later than I'd intended). Passed by two cop cars on three ambulances, all with sirens going, which didn't bode well, but turned out to have nothing to do with the protest.

I met a group of environmentalists at Grace Cathedral, just down the street from my apartment, and we walked to Civic Center from there. Someone gave me a sign that said "If war is inevitable, let's draft the SUV drivers now", just seemed a little too mindlessly anti-technology for me, so I traded it for one that said "Go Solar, not Ballistic", which I liked much better. Sunny day, and I forgot my sun glasses. Turns out a protest sign makes a very effective sun shade. Looking around, I wasn't the only one who'd figured that out.

So, we marched down to civic center, and there met up with other groups that were marching from other sections of the city. The police were blocking the road off ahead of us to let us pass, as there were far too many of us to fit on the sidewalks. People cheered from their balcony along the way.

Talking to other protestors there, they pretty much all seemed to think that war is inevitable. "So," I ask, "What good are we doing?" "We're letting the world know that people here who oppose what Bush is doing in our name, and when it starts getting really bad the more there are of us the earlier others will rise up and demand it to stop." So, there are plans for the future already? Yeah, there's another protest on the 15th of February, and another in March, and so on until this whole stupid war ends. After all, the Vietnam war didn't end after just one big protest against it. "Well, what about all the civil rights being violated? Secret arrests with no charges, bail, or communication with the outside world? Bush's recent permission for other governemnts to kill people without a trial inside our own borders? Aren't you worried about being "dissapeared". Nope: for one, Bush is only targeting Muslims and Arabs. It's fucked up, it's evil, it needs to stop, but it doesn't scare me. And the peace movement is either high-profile people, hollywood actors and the like, which would be difficult to kill without anyone noticing, and anyonymous nobodies like you and me, who they wouldn't bother with because they don't even know we exist yet.

And that, I think sums it up. This is, to many people, the beginning of the new peace movement, nothing more, nor less. While the protest makes good TV, the real work, raising awarenesss, writing your congressmen, and so on, is quiet, and boring, will never be on TV, but is the really vital part.

I've got some pictures I'll put up tonight, or tomorrow, but for now I'm going to work out my frustration at the complete lack of violence, or even excitement, by a playing a couple hours of "Deus Ex".

Just bought a plane ticket for the return trip a few minutes ago. Driving up there on the night of Thursday the 24th of January, and arriving sometime Friday the 25th (since it's just me, I'll likely stop to sleep somewhere along the way). Drop my car off in Portland, hang out for a couple of days, then fly back Sunday evening. Should be fun.
Anyone live between San Francisco and Portland and want a ride up?

That's the weekend after next. Next weekend, I'm gonna head downtown to a big anti-war protest and check it out. Maybe chant a few slogans, take a few pictures of cops, add (1) to the numbers in the crowd. Fun fun. Wish I'd noticed what time they were going to start. They put up signs to announce it, but they keep getting torn down for some reason...

And this afternoon, after my meetings, I'm spending in Rational's on-line course, learning about Use Cases and modeling with UML, and desperately trying to stay awake...

The Christmas present from my mother arrived yesterday. Along with a big fuzzy blanket, and the book of the new Star Trek movie, there was a bag of Bertie Bott's Beans that they picked up last month in their trip to the Jelly Belly factory.
Now, to understand the implications of this, you gotta know a few things: My family is very (very) religious. Of the Pat-Robertson-listening, Jack-Chick-Reading, gather-round-for-a-good-old-book-burning variety. Bertie Bott's Every-Flavor Beans are a candy that feature prominently in the Harry Potter novels, which of course, the fundamentalist churches condemn as evil. A fact of which she is quite aware. In past years, I've been given Christian books and heartfelt "Jesus is real" statements. For her to buy me a bag of them for a Christmas present is a hell of a statement: An acceptance that my beliefs differ from hers and that it doesn't matter. For the first time since I was like ten, I feel like I'm loved and accepted for who I am.

I'm not sure of all the psycho-sociological implications of a booger-flavored jelly bean being a symbol of a mother's love, but there it is.

So, I've been procrastinating on my cleaning for weeks now. Finally, I spent an hour cleaning, organizing, scrubbing, sweeping, mopping, and the place looks a whole hell of a lot better. My mental state is much improved, and it suddenly feels like home again. Why the hell did I put off something so simple, for so long, that took me only an hour when I finally got around to it? Less, actually, because I spent some time putting together a playlist of my .mp3's to listen to while cleaning

I have this leather longcoat which I absolutely love. I bought it at a Chinatown discount store about three years ago. Last night, while walking home up California street, two women on the other side of the street yelled over at me. When I looked over, one of them yelled something like "an animal died for that!" and the other "Leather is murder!"

So I opened the coat to show them the lining and yelled back "And the inside is bunny rabbit!"

Unfortunately, they then moved away very quickly before I could point out that it was made in China, probably at a forced-labor camp for political dissidents...

Of course, I have long been aware that Strawberry Pop tarts could be made to ignite. (For those who have never seen a flaming pastry, look here.)

( Fire's cool, huhuhuhuh )

I love Christmas. I love the hype. I love the commercialism. I love ads for war toys during "Frosty the Snowman". I love every child's first introduction to Santa Claus: "You call that a nose? Donner, you make sure your kid keeps that freakish thing covered up! Now, I gotta go pig out - after all, the children expect a fat Santa!" (And who can forget Yukon Cornelius, the North Pole's answer to Yosemite Sam?) I love the malls full of stressed-out shoppers trying to buy their last-minute crap gifts, and fretting about their budgets and hoping they're still employed after the holidays so they have some chance of paying off their credit cards. God rest ye merry, merchants, make you make the yule-tide pay.

Hmmm... That sounds kinda cynical, but really, I do love these things. After all, commercialism is what makes our economy go. Rudolph eventually learns that being different is good, and the misfit toys re-join society, who accepts their differences. And, of course, there's nothing like that smug sense of self-satisfaction that comes with being in the midst of a stressed-out crowd rushing from store to store, but going along at your own pace, knowing you have three hours before the party and only two gifts to buy. And of course, there's the Chex(tm) mix cooking in the oven, Weekend-Before-Christmas Ham on the stove, presents for gift exchange under the tree (what'd'ya get ME?!) (and being banished to the back room and updating your live journal on your friends computer because they haven't wrapped their presents out there yet.)

Although I'm still trying to get a handle on the fact that the store down the street from my apartment is having a Christmas special on barbeque eel...