Meeting with a patent lawyer on Wednesday. LordFuckBeast and I are slowly but steadily moving ahead on The Project. It’s driving me crazy…it takes so much work to make anything happen, it’s just absurd.

Still, I suppose I should be happy it takes so much work to accomplish anything worthwhile. Barrier to entry, and all that. But even so, the roadblocks the world puts in front of you are very frustrating sometimes. It’s almost like they do it with malice, though I know that isn’t so.

Paranoia is not in thinking everyone is out to get you. Everyone is out to get you. paranoia is in thinking they’re conspiring.

Well, I’m back from MacWorld San Francisco, finally, after spending the entire day from 9AM until midnight at the airport or in the air.

While feorlen and I were in SF, we had the unique pleasure of meeting altenra, who is an all-around cool chick.

I say “unique pleasure” because the first day I met her, she broke me, and sent me back to my hotel room damaged goods. Undaunted, I spent a second day with her, and she took me to a bathhouse, made me dirty, led me into a dark place, and covered me with chicken feathers.

And it isn’t what you think.

First day, she offered to take me on a walking tour of the city. Her: “How much walking can you do?” Me: “As much as you can. Do your worst!”

Fifteen miles later, she was still skipping and bouncing while I was limping along behind her. I finally hobbled back to the hotel, and spent the rest of the week limping around the convention.

The second day I spent with her, she took me to Sutro Baths, the ruins of an old nineteenth-century bathhouse on Ocean Beach:

You can’t tell from the picture, but rain and constant salt spray have turned the ground into a sea of slippery mud. Behind me as I took this image was a cave, which we went into, stopping along the way just long enough to get COVERED in mud.

“But the chicken feathers!” I hear you say. “Tell us of the chicken feathers!”

Ah, yes, the chicken feathers.

When nightfall comes in San Francisco, the temperature drops very, very fast. feorlen and I didn’t really realize that. We went to meet altenra on a sunny afternoon. Feorlen didn’t spend the whole day with us, but as night was falling, we were still out exploring, and it got suddenly very cold.

“The chicken feathers! The chicken feathers!”

I’m getting to the chicken feathers. She let me wear her down jacket. It sheds. I was wearing a black sweater underneath. Hence: Chicken feathers.

Ah, yes, one more point of interest:

Above Sutro baths is a museum of old penny-arcade machines. And video games, mostly dating back to the Golden Age of the Video Game (about 1980-1984). They had a Star Wars video game–an old vector game made by Atari.

I LOVED this game as a kid. in 1983, I could play for hours on one quarter; my high score was just over two million, nine hundred thousand points.

They had one! They had one at the museum!

First time I have played since 1984, and on altenra‘s quarter. Score: 300,000 points.

I’m leaving for San Francisco tomorrow! Heading out to MacWorld, and I haven’t even started to pack yet. sigh Just means I’ll be up all night tonight, I imagine.

feorlen was kind enough to give me a film safe for my camera bag, since I’m fond of using 3200 speed film, which turns to mush if it goes through an airport X-ray machine. Which means, of course, that the security people are going to see a large, opaque black rectangle on the X-ray monitor…which means I’m sure to get hand-searched…but at least my film will be okay.

If the guy in front of me on the plane tries to light his shoes on fire, so help me, I’ll strangle him.

Fate has a sense of humor.

It’s a sick, malicious, meanspirited sense of humor, but it’s a sense of humor nonetheless.

The first day of my Christmas vacation. I started getting sick. By Christmas eve I was miserable–stuffy head, sore throat, you name it.

Christmas eve I slept crooked. Christmas day, i woke up with such a serious muscle spasm in my neck and shoulder that both were effectively paralyzed.

At least I’ve recovered from both conditions just in time to go into the office tomorrow…

At any rate, I really shouldn’t be complaining. I had a good time nonetheless. My old friend Thumper and his wife, who moved to Boston about five years ago, spent most of the week with us; it was great. I had almost forgotten how wonderful it is to spend time with old friends.

Thumper oficially forfeitted his bet with me. In 1992, we each made a bet that the other would be the first to have children. The bet ran like this: We put twenty-five cents in the pot, with the understanding that the first person to have a child would forefeit the pot to the other. Each year,t he pot doubles–twenty-five cents, fifty cents, a dollar, two dollars, four dollars, and so on. He was sure my wife and I would have kids.

Well, now his wife is expecting, and I’ve had a “proceedure” that ensures I’ll never be a father, so he gracefully acknowledged I’d won. Twenty-five cents doubled every year since 1992 is now worth $128. 🙂

We had a party yesterday evening, with some new friends and some old. One of my oldest friends, who I met in high school (and, truth be told, had something of an intense crush on back when I was fifteen) was there; she’d disappeared from my life about twelve years ago, and reappeared just as abruptly after looking me up on the Internet. Even after all this time, we still get along beautifully.

We played drinking games and talked and laughed and played Mao, a very strange card game where the players (other than the dealer) aren’t allowed to know the rules when the game stats, and are penalized for not knowing the rules…much fun.

I’ve come to the conclusion that L. just might be even more creative than I am. I am in awe of her devious, kinky imagination. I’ve had more practice than she, though, so I may yet be able to hold my own. 🙂

I’m leaving for San Francisco in six days! MacWorld, here I come!

About eighteen years ago, I knew a woman named Heidi Hoffman. I didn’t know her altogether well; our lives took separate courses about six months after we met. But I still remember her very well, and many of the things she said have remained with me.

Heidi had a pet iguana. Every so often, she would take it out of its cage to play with it. Whenever she reached into its cage, the lizard would strike at her, and she would jump back; then she’d reach into its cage again and it would sit there calmly and allow her to take it out.

One day, after they had played out this little ritual and she had jumped back, she turned to me and said “I wish it would hit me, just once, so I would know what it feels like, and I wouldn’t be afraid of it any more.”

That has always remained one of the most interesting things anyone has ever said to me, and in the years since then, some element of that idea has become a part of my personal philosophy. Knowing a thing–even a painful thing–tends to chase fear of that thing away.

She also loaned me a book to read. The book was called “Flood,” and I don’t remember very much about it save for the fact that I enjoyed reading it. Every so often, I’ve made an attempt to find it again, if only to see if it was as good as I remember it being, half a lifetime ago.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. There are about a zillion books called “Flood,” both in and out of print. But I finally located it yesterday. It’s a novel by Andrew H. Vachss, and Amazon had one copy in stock.

Now they have no copies in stock. 🙂 It will be interesting to see if the novel is as good I dimly remember it.

URL of the Day: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in stop-motion Lego animation.

=======

I’m sick. It sucks. Woke up Saturday morning with a sore throat, and by Saturday evening it was a full-blown “stuffy fuzzy head” thing.

The second girlfriend stopped by last night, and I wasn’t even feeling up to spending any time with her…

In any event, it occurs to me that I’ve been more excited about my upcoming trip to MacWorld San Fransisco in early January than I am about Christmas. Yes, I knowm, I know…what can I say?

Off to bed…*sniff*

Bumper sticker of the day: “Keep Music Evil!”
URL of the day: No Such File.

Yesterday, I got a Christmas package from L. A little something for everything; something to feel, something to taste, something to see… Very, very cool. It included some elements that my wife can enjoy, as well.

Going to be a busy couple of weeks. My parents will be visiting for Christmas, as will our friends Thumper and Sara. We’ll likely be seeing the secondary girlfriend for some part of the upcoming week, as well. At least this time we don’t have to hide the whips and chains or otherwise “parent-proof” the house!

I won’t say that my parents have always been perfect or flawless, or that they have in all things been without error of any kind. But I am thankful that I’ve never had to conceal anything from them.

Maybe that has made me impatient with people who have families that are not so understanding. I deeply resent having to go through the house whenever my wife’s parents are in town, hiding anything that might disturb them; and I think it’s unfortunate we can’t really be who we are in front of them. But then, it’s an imperfect world.

New robot Fido doubles as a Dildo

“The street finds its own uses for things.” –William Gibson

Amusing bumper sticker of the day: “Make Him Beg!”

========

If you are searching for one more useless than you in the kitchen, you need look no farther than me.

I rarely venture into the kitchen, save for finding something to drink from teh refrigerator, and when I do, I feel as though I am adrift and lost in a hostile and threatening land.

I can not cook. Anything. At all. I can’t prepare macaroni and cheese. To me, cooking is akin to sorcery–strange rituals are performed over fire, using many bizarre ingredients unrecognizable by me, and the result, magically, is food.

I don’t know what lies in our kitchen, and I don’t care to. I can often not even recognize objects of food before they are prepared, and I am mystified by their application. All my friends know better than to ask me if we have this or that ingredient on hand; in fact, most of my friends have a far better knowledge of the contents of our refrigerator and our pantry than do I. My incompetence in the kitchen is widely known and talked about–the stuff of legends and myths.

Fortunately, I have a Sicilian wife who loves to cook, and takes great pleasure in her skill at the culinary arts. Were that not so, I would eat nothing save for what is offered on the menu at McDonald’s.

I wonder, is that a vice?

First of all: My primary girlfriend has decided to start her own LiveJournal, so a big welcome to feorlen!

A number of friends and I have already purchased advanced tickets to the Wednesday screening of The Fellowship of the Ring. I can’t wait.

Spent most of the evening last night having a highly philosophical discussion with my wife and my primary girlfriend about the nature of love. We were up until after two o’clock in the morning, and I’ve been moving through a sleepy haze all day today. I believe…well, I believe many things about the nature of love,and some of those things are completely counterintuitive. Perhaps that will be the subject of a different posting later.

Friday night I set aside several hours for L., who had wanted to arrange an “online date” of sorts, which soon turned to the phone. I was very, very, very evil, and introduced her to the concept of the “zip strip.”

In case you’re not familiar with zip strips, they’re made by taking a number of clothespins (say, twelve or so) and tying them together in aline with a piece of twine, so that each clothespin is several inches from the one after it. The clothespins are clamped onto one’s body in a line, see, along certain key places–for example, in a line starting from the inner thigh just above the knee up along the thigh, up the belly, under the breast, and finally to the nipple. At the appropriate time, you pull the string, and the clothespins go flying off–pop! pop! pop!

It’s very…er, intense. Who says you can’t touch someone directly over the phone? 🙂

Don’t know yet where the thing with L. is going. You’d think I would have my hands full already, and i’ve never before attempted anything like a long-distance relationship, or at least anything that’s started that way; feorlen lives in Atlanta now, but she was local when we first started dating.

And yet…and yet…

I dunno.