I spent a huge swath of today working myself into a froth. Almost since I have known him, M. and I have swapped a lot of IMs, emails, phone calls and such like messages across the Internet ether. A huge chunk amount to no more than “Hey.”

Wired as we are, I can also see the little green dot in G’Talk and know that he’s logged in somewhere in the universe.

This morning I got to work. No little green dot. I did some work, thinking huh, must be in a meeting. No worries.

By 2 p.m., still no green dot. I call his office. No answer. I call his cell. Straight to voicemail. Lather, rinse, repeat. Foment.

Worry, worry, worry.

I think it my birthright, the natural state of an island of folks who celebrate with songs and novels called “Finnegan’s Wake” is to assume the worst. Worra, worra, worra, worra. I mean, dead in the ditch does happen.

By 3:30 p.m., I had checked local news websites for car accidents. (His car is a slowly dying.) I’d called his phone many times. I’d rebooted my computer to ensure Google Talk was working. My mood was sour. I imagined myself alone.

I truly spent a hours distraught. I tried to decide what I would do if something was wrong. I thought about whether there was anyone I could call at his work to see if he were there. I thought about how much information I could get at a hospital given that we cohabitate, a hazy legal arrangement.

A good hunk of time had me pondering the late, great Pat. I thought about how the family had moved to Maryland, and maybe we were there for about the same time I’ve been in Cali before tragedy struck.

Pat took the kids and turned around back home to the house that was still on the market in Massachusetts. The way my house is on the market now.

Would I stay here and keep going with the current job? Would I head back? Either way, I both can and cannot imagine what I would do.

More than that, I realized I am too tied to the life we have together, that I would miss him (duh), and I couldn’t possibly know for sure what could possibly happen next.

Then, I got M. on the phone. He was in meetings all day, big doings with HQ back east.

Meetings. And alive.

I do a joke in stand-up about having essentially a happy relationship, and my mind figures that means tragedy looms in a corner if it continues. It rings true when I do it, because it is true.

My brain, the neurotic bits and the imaginative bits, always ends up darkly. I’ll probably die from exhaustion waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In conclusion, I’m a fucking idiot.

I’m told there will be an open house at 42B Union Street in the fair city of Cambridge tomorrow. Go ahead and go. Soak in the aroma of history, the story that was, the memories that are fading.

Or just buy it, mama needs a little cash in the bank to keep materialism shiny and new. I’m looking forward to being a THOUSANDAIRE!

I’m a member in good standing of audible.com.  A fabulous source for audiobooks it is too.

So, I have a number of books I can download from my membership.  I was just listening to samples of Ann Fucking Coulter’s books.

Did you know that you can buy many of them as read by the psycho facist herself or by a narrator?  The versions by herself are the cheaper ones.   My guess is even her publishers realize her windbaggedness grates at best after a while.

Anyway, I was thinking I could download one copy and podcast and whatnot that mother fucker to all sorts of lefty corners of the universe.  Remember Abbie Hoffman and “Steal This Book?”

Wouldn’t the cease and desist letter I got eventually be suitable for framing?

By the way, from the sample I learned that as a liberal, I am a Druid and am afraid of science.  Who knew?

[image:3943:l][image:3953:l][newline]So much to write about — where to begin?

I’d write about old Ken Lay avoiding sentencing, but there are a lot of folks writing in their weblogs to the tune of “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.” By the way, how much of a scumbag do you have to be for NPR to be getting quotes amounting to “Even before Enron, a lot of people quit companies he ran because of his lack of ethics?”

Seems to me that usually the old mainstream media, even the quasi-leftie, intellectual branch, tries to get the obit tie in of some kind of redemptive action. The sort of “Sure, he was a bastard ruler/war-monger/businessman/what-have-you, but the trains ran on time or he helped old ladies across the street or hugged puppies or some wonderful thing. When Nixon and Reagan died, people fell over themselves to talk about China and the Berlin Wall and lovely stuff. You know, forget that pesky Vietnam, Iran/Contra, Bitburg ugliness.

Not Kenny man, nope. For him he mugged middle America and that’s about that.

Then, there’s July 4. My pics above were from Santa Clara, USA. It’s a far cry from the Esplanade in Boston, where I guess I missed Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, but they were pretty damn good. The finale was crazy busy with an outrageousness of sheer volume.

Other than that, we cooked out, ate all day and got our American feedbag on. Sweet. (Oh, and I’ll have to remember to write about fetishes and dating and all sorts of neato shit that summed up makes me smile at the things me and the boy-o have going for us.)

Last thing, I finall ordered by our friendly neighborhood Apple engineer, this here sweet, mother-fucking laptop.[newline]

My Powerbook is a slowly dying and with the old Cambridge homestead about to be listed on the free, capitalistic market of real estate sales, I’m looking to gear up for being a thousandaire.

Let me know if you’re looking for a fixer upper two-bedroom condo a safe walk to the trade school on the other side of town from Harvard.

Since my man is late coming to the membership of the eternal fraternity of the U.S. of A and citizenship therein, we’s having a cookout. Burning meat and blueberry pie, ain’t that America.

For Dave, my friend from ‘cross the pond–yeah, we beat your sorry red-coated asses and now we get to pollute and bomb whatever we want for democracy. Hoo-Rah!

Hope you is all having fun doing what you’re doing. Peace.

There’s a woman in my current acquaintance who I have thought deeply about despising for two facts introduced immediately upon meeting her.  Actually, one fact was presented to me before we met.

She’s a chick around my age, somewhere between my sister and me, I would guess.   This ballpark puts her definitively in what could be “my generation.”  Now, my generation came up and came to consciousness after Betty Freidan did a bit of writing and Germaine Greer shocked a few folks.  (I mention Germaine, ‘cuz the chick in question may not know about U.S. homegrown balls broads, like Betty or Gloria.)

So, I get told about her in advance and by way of introduction based on WHAT HER HUSBAND DOES FOR A LIVING.  I meet her and she tells me about herself based on WHAT HER HUSBAND DOES FOR A LIVING.  Go dig up Joan Crawford, because apparently 1948 is back in vogue again.

Seriously, who does that any more?  And, might I add, I don’t fucking care WHAT YOUR HUSBAND DOES FOR A LIVING, unless I were going to meet him (unlikely) or he was about to grant me three wishes.

The second fact was also told to me by someone else but then reiterated by the hausfrau in question.  Apparently, she’s a very intelligient woman with a vast wealth of experience.

Here’s the short version of the rant inside my head in response to hearing that uttered, “Not bloody fucking likely.”

Good to know I sit in the middle of the highest tech of the tech corridor in the world and apparently the wayback machine is set fully on and headed toward stupid.

The title of this post has to be read with a hard ‘R’ intoning the sweet dismay of doe-eyed Nancy.

M. likes to say it just so, as an homage to Nancy that also serves to make me wonder where exactly I am in my life. Oh, Lord.

It suits my mood, though, after a special evening in comedy-contest surrealism. The inherent flaw in any comedy competition is that they lend themselves to the worst part of old-timey talent shows. If it were music, you’d be pitting accomplished string quartets against death metal head bangers with folksy singer-songwriters, drunken karaoke, spoon and saw players and some Tuva throat singers. Just an unholy, wholey fucking random mix to determine “the best.”

For a variety of reasons, I suspect whatever bit I do have by way of ability to entertain it never, ever, never, ever, ever will be shown to best advantage in a contest. I know this intellectually and accept it fully in my heart and soul.

Nonetheless the fuckedupness of the human mind is that leap where you think, “I dunno, maybe I will win.”

D’oh.

On the crazy ass, what the fuck and why am I here? front–No fucking lie, this show included an angry-sounding bit of original guitar playing, a woman who could be described as in Mame (and much like myself) as “somewhere between 40 and death,” who calls herself a poet, comic philosopher and who had a spontaneous and dramatic nosebleed right before the show, several young men of varying degrees of interesting and/or talent, a performer with thick eye-stinging halitosis and a legally blind lawyer. I am making none of this up. None. And, tomorrow or some time soon there will be videotaped evidence.

It was cool meeting some folks and talking to a couple of others and just hanging out in that comedy hanging out way. I had a couple of brief, but interesting convos, all nicey nice, joy, joy to be putting on a show. There were even people comprising an audience.

Still and all, when they announced the winners, there were the couple of names, as there always are in comedy contests, where at best you think, “Huh?” and at worst you think, “No fucking way.” When the one douche did an endzone type dance with self-congratulatory yelping, it definitely leaned more to the second thought.

I can’t decide which was my favorite personal exchange of the night, though. Was it the quick dialogue that went something like:

Guy, “Hi, she said (gesturing to a woman off to the side) that you’re a Chronicle reporter doing a piece on the show tonight. Because you have that tripod.”

Me, “Huh, what? Um, it’s for my video camera, if I tape myself tonight.”

Guy, “Yeah. I thought you were a comic…”

In an appropriately short number of comic beats later, the woman referenced above walked up to me:

Lady with rich imagination, “Have you been to many comedy shows? (Or something like that.) Are you taping the show?”

Me, “Just my set,” followed by awkwardness and ensuing discourse about my non-reporter status.

Puzzling that whole thing was. Among the questions in my head, why would a newspaper report tape a comedy show?

The better to transcribe here in text, I think, was this exchange:

“I get a strong sense that you are an air sign.”

“Nope.”

“Oh, than earth.”

“No. Is there just one left?”

“Fire, then? I didn’t see that.”

“Um, uh, no, water. I’m Pisces.”  (I kept inside my head, “Now you want to guess any other random facts about me that prove absolutely nothing about my personality?”)
Fucking California.