The most disturbing aspect of the picture below would, of course, be my gut hanging out below my shirt.

That’s a recent fashion trend I find quite unpalatable. On myself, it’s inexcusable. I might have to Photoshop in more shirt.

Last weekend was the Gay, Lesbian and Trans-various things Pride Festival in the city of San Francisco. (Here’s a link to the photos.)

This picture sums up the weekend for me, and clearly I am not pretty enough to be gay:

Maybe Bob Geldof is a well-off bullshit artist extraordinaire, selfish self-promoter, as the critics are charging. Or maybe it does help every now and again to remind people what the fuck goes on in the world.

I don’t know, although, it looks like M. and I are heading into SF to check out a webcast/broadcast event. Good little mult-culti couple that we are, we have both signed the petition at One.org. And, courtesy of my new boss, I have my oh so courant white bracelet reminding the world and world leaders to give a shit.

Maybe it’s the sunshine here in Cali, maybe it’s a day of music, and who doesn’t like music, right? Or maybe it’s because I’m working at a place that has it’s finger in the world-wide pie, but I’m feeling kind of hopeful. GW was probably lying or manipulating, but he did just say the US would do something.

Actually, it’s kind of surreal working in a place connected to Live8 and the G8 and global power. So, the G8 Summit is taking place in Gleneagles, Scotland. How weird is it to hear your co-workers saying “Yeah, I’m not going to Gleneagles, but so-and-so is,” and know that the white bracelet thang is connected to that letter promising some moolah to an international charity group I had to make sure I mailed my first week. Or, to be chatting with a dude in London, who happens to work at OxFam, about how his teenage daughter is basically pissed, “What good is having a dad at Oxfam, if he can’t get tickets to Live8?” Or to know that before Bush made his speech some folks in my boss’s world were all ready making plans to be there, because they knew what he’d be saying.

When I worked in the academic, biological, medical complex that is Boston’s research world, there was a certain cache to being an arm’s length from Nobel prizewinners, science celebrities and expert opinion-makers. But, that world is so fucking small potatoes and parochial compared to politics, money and the world. The funniest part is the “best and the brightest” of the academe in their myopic arrogance have no fucking idea what strings they ain’t pulling and aren’t even near. Boston may as well be Cleveland or Des Moines.

The plus side for yours truly is that in the smaller world of biomedical research the puffed up egos and inflated senses of self-importance made the workaday world pretty petty and exhausting. Think Napoleon, the early years; little people with urges to conquer the world but willing to conquer subordinates around them in the mean time.

In the corridors of actual power, I don’t think anyone has the time or inclination to worry whether I’m toeing some theoretical line. Nothing like nothing to prove to mellow out the sharpened knives of office politics.

I’ve avoided writing today, because it’s just pissy negative shit in my head (great use of language — pissy shit). Apart from trying to be a bit more relaxed and flow going, this being California and all, I also don’t want to go down in girlfriend annals as the one nicknamed “Cunty McCunt.”

M.’s old roommate has finished some year-long globetrotting and has dropped by our spare room. That’s fine, on a theoretical plane. But, man, oh, man, when you’ve had a long week of working (and you’re still tuckered out by not being used to new people and new routines) and the president on down says, “why don’t you cut out early,” and facing you is the prospect of making small talk with some dude you ain’t hardly know lying on the living room floor watching all the TV he missed while traveling. Well it just kind of ain’t relaxing, that’s all.

So, I stayed a bit later at work and played with my desk supplies and shit.

He’s an OK guy, but there will always be a bare-knuckled fist curled in my heart for a certain kind of computer nerd. Why do guys who can program or keep computers running think they know piles of shit about everything in the universe. In truth those guys, the ones who comment on ever thing, and seemingly thrive on pointing out the obvious, when it comes to knowing shit, they know jack.

I could go further and describe in excruciating detail examples of why I wrote the paragraph above, but, hey, man, like it’s the weekend, dude and this is California, and I, like, maybe need a blunt or something to smooth out the edges. (‘course that might have happened when I was youthful and a bit of weed didn’t make me cower in the corner, paranoid about everything, everyone and any number of conspiracies.)

Speaking of conspiracies, as a total aside, there’s a dude in Boston who I know from comedy, who believes every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike and is absolutely convinced that there is a power elite pushing us little guys like the pawns and cannon fodder we are. I think he’s completely full of shit and more than a little crazy.

However, one month into working in the major leagues of philanthropy, and I ain’t so sure any more. They be a lot of meetings happened with a lot of folks there solely on the basis of who they know, who they hang with and the amount of dough they bring to the table. Wicked cabal? Maybe not. But, power elite? Oh, they are fucking out there.

Anyway, I’m trying hard not to freak on the extra house-guest, because I like M. and he’s M.’s bud. Nothing like M. coming home to a shrew to make life suck, ya dig?

Maybe I’m also pissing and moaning, because I vowed to myself at this job not to get sucked into any old patterns and annoyances. What the guy at the next desk is doing is none of my fucking business, and I ain’t getting involved. Hard to have shit stick to you, if you don’t engage.

But. Obviously, there had to be a but. I’ve been working with a chick who stepped down to part time. Only she doesn’t even bother to come in very much of the part in that time. And, when she’s there, work isn’t really what she’s all about. I have no intention of narc-ing on her (see “don’t engage” above), but it sure doesn’t help that our mutual boss keeps asking about her helping with my training.

Jesus, I guess I need a long weekend. Bring on the goddamn fireworks.

So I’m sitting here at work, talking on the phone to the boss and an email pops up from none other than the president. The subject heading is “volleyball.” Apparently, he’s gauging the level of interest in setting up a court.

Man, I’m working for Moondoggie and Gidget.

If you haven’t checked out Google Earth, you should.

I’m just now looking at my street in Cambridge, including a satellite view of my rooftop. The only weird thing about the image is I can’t figure out what time of the day they could have possibly taken it. There are almost no cars on the street, which just never happened.

I’ve been thinking about relationships. Clearly, it’s only a coincidence that I’m now living with M.

I think trust in a relationship isn’t defined by the usual suspects of infidelity or drinking or money worries or howling at the moon. I think “trust” is trusting that this mood will pass. The moods that have you thinking, “Huh, I wonder how deep a ‘shallow grave’ is and how long that’d take to dig?”

I’m confident that this time it will pass, but for now, I’m hiding the knives.

My work paranoia is making me crazy. I really wasn’t made for closet living. Fuck, I don’t even know how to use a closet that well. Weirder still, folks still seem to be nice, and I’m closing in a month’s labor without thinking otherwise.

One strange thing about my current salt mine is the number of people who passed through good, old Cambridge and left. Key words, “and left.” They came, they saw, they did the ivory tower of power bullshit (at least that’s the vibe I get) and left. Adios, see ya, gotta go live among the flower children, predictable, yet ever-surprising, micro-climates and possible earthquake threats.

Among the differences at this workplace from others in my past is the whole reaction to the comedy thang. Back in staid old Beantown, my quest for stand-up comedy greatness (defined as something >mediocrity and pure cock-sucking) was cute, I think, among the bosses above me. Their looks were quizzical, patronizing.

Here, there seems to be some actual spark of interest. I was surprised today by one of the directors, who by carriage and accent seems far from crappy bars and seedy entertainers. She offered to put me in touch with her son’s ex, who performs around SF. Better still, she asked not in a cloying fakey fake interest way, or patronizingly, it was all very “not sure how networking works in comedy, but if you want…”

I’m getting lulled into trusting humanity again. I fucking hate that.

Refreshingly (in terms of maintaining a cynical edge), some of the buzz at work involves Wolfowitz’ new gig at the World Bank. I can’t not think about him sucking on a comb in Farenheit 911, when his name comes up. I’m all up in the world-wide money bags, these days. I even got one of them bracelets all the kids (and middle-aged, Bob-Geldof-loving rockers) is wearing.

There was a little bit of cache back in the research world I left in Boston. The hip and glamorous world of fighting disease and occasionally spotting a stricken celeb. But, now, I’m way less than six degrees of separation from the forces of evil in the world. One of these days, I might be on the phone with the offices of comb-sucking Wolfowitz or Condoleeza “Devil’s Handmaiden” Rice. One step away from a Black Mass or raising the dead, I figure. Rock on.

I think I just heard an Amber Alert. I can’t help, and I’m not sure if that is what it was. Mostly, I just have a nervous feeling of maybe a kind of impotent empathy.

The back door is open, and it’s after 11 p.m. There was a helicopter blade noise overhead and a PA system. The announcement was something about calling 911 if you saw an “Asian, autistic, 15-year-old boy wearing a blue jacket.” Strangely Big Brother, but with heart.

I dunno, cord wood? Grains of sand? I guess pick your favorite trite representation for giant piles.

Actually, grains of sand seem apropos, since the mounting cliches in question are those that favor the California “lifestyle.” Yesterday’s episode featured a beach party complete with beer, blankets and a bonfire.

A while back in the new job mailbox there was some kind of invitation for said beach party. I asked a couple folks what the deal was, but clearly my target question answerers were not the beach party targeted audience. Then, as I was trying to wrap some shit up before the elusive, mercurial (but not assholic) boss lady fled for the weekend, she and other folks in our group were like “you gotta go, it’ll be fun.”

So, a few hustled phone calls to the man o’ mine, and M. turned around and met me in my office. What a sweetie to regroup like that, but please don’t tell him I think so, or he’ll get too much relationship currency on his side of the scales.

It was alright. I, of course, am considerably dorky and shy around new people, which currently is excerbated by my neurotic fear of co-workers. Honestly, people have been swell, but I’m looking over my shoulder trying to peer at the knife between my shoulder blades.

So far, no knife or even the hint of glinting blade. Yet, I’m still considerably dorky and shy.

But, still and all, I sat by a bonfire on a beach in view of the rolling Pacific, surrounded by cliffs, drinking a plastic cup of cheap wine with my boyo by my side. Really, does it get any more cliche than that?