Earlier in the week, I got voicemail from a very funny man. Specifically, a funny Boston comedian, Tony Moschetto, who’s around the Bay competing in the San Francisco Comedy Competition.

I was happy to figure out he’d be performing about 15 minutes down the road from us in Redwood City. And, it was a Sunday matinee, which was pretty damn convenient. The possible downside, if you were like in a 12-step program or otherwise frowned on misbehavior, was I had a Stella Artois in my fist by 2:30 in the afternoon. Been awhile since I started drinking early.

They suitably darkened the room, though, and a nice little performance space it was. A few giggles midday. I still hate comedy competitions, though.

It was great seeing Tony. I always liked him. He’s one of the good guys of comedy, I think, who a lot of folks, myself included, root for making it. Of course, it was a reminder of a sad little bit of truth from my leaving the East. More than one of my friends from East have mentioned that we’re friendlier and closer and all that kind of shit, since I left town and headed West. Mostly, I figure it says that I’m definitely the sort where absence makes your heart grow fonder.

If you dig me a bit as a friend, stay far the fuck away from me and we’ll be tight.

Perhaps not unrelatedly, there’s a shared part of M. and me that prefers not having to associate with the rest of the world. After his Cambridge buddies were in the ‘hood and Tony’s call, there was a bit of a discussion on out-of-town visitors. Since we’ve had a few since moving West, M.’s attitude and statement was “Who’s next?”

Sure as fucking hell, he jinxed us. Sitting in his email box this morning were greetings from his aunt, mentioning the impending visit of the sister of her husband, M.’s uncle by marriage, to San Francisco, along with her Australian husband.

There’ll be time enough to be alone together when we’re too old to visit, I guess. Or dead.

Get in touch and plan your Cali trip so M. and I can whine behind your back. Everyone is welcome.

Technorati Tags: alone, California, comedy, happiness, Tony_Moschetto, visitors

If your soul decision-making in the day so far has been (a) to wear a hat and (b) put on socks, because your feet are cold, you may not be the standard-bearer of intellectual achievement for your generation.

It is a nice hat, though. A tweed scally cap, my souvenir from the recent trek to Scotland.

I got myself into a whole lot of budgeting at work. It’s literally been years now since I was flipping through spreadsheet after spreadsheet trying to get some shit to balance and make some sense.

What was I thinking when I mentioned a certain familiarity to the toil a while back?

The plus side is working on spreadsheets really feeds into my OCD tendencies. Columns, rows, highlighting, cutting pasting over and over and over and over again. Then checking all the formulas, going back through the detail, double-checking the formulas, reformatting. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

It’s cathartic in a weird, repetitive, raking leaves into piles kind of way. If only I could convince people not to talk with me. At all. Ever. As I rake and rearrange the piles.

As I started writing this little bit of lazy prose, I had nothing of any kind of interest. But, for a few nights now, there’s a commercial running during “The Daily Show” —
“Colbert Report” block on Comedy Central. It’s a marketing campaign for the local Unitarians. Whatever, don’t care to mock the quasi-religious.

What I don’t get about the commercials is that they are animated. But, like shitty Photoshop, create a cartoon from a photograph kind of animation. So, the people talking look a bit like a courtroom sketch or some other kind of not quite revealing their identity kind of picture.

I don’t get it. Are they hiding?

Recently, the NY Times did a profile of Secretary of State Rice’s likely return to the Stanford neighborhood (and the shit and heat she’ll likely face). Still and all, it was her home until history swept her into the worst fucking presidency ever.

Now, the ever-charming Rumsfeld will be flying west.

The bright side is, think about it, some fine California evening, perhaps warmed with a good meal of locally grown, seasonal delights and a glass or two of the vino, M. and I could be out for a stroll down the local streets. Boom, we spy a Condi or a Rummy also perambulating after fine dining. Think of the possibilities.

“Oops, how clumsy of me, sir. I wasn’t watching my feet.” Or, yours, as I “accidentally” tripped you to the curb.

“Ma’am, a good evening to you. I’d like to introduce myself. May I ask you a question? What the fuck were you thinking? Did George ever make you literally blow him?”

It couldn’t only get better if OJ started golfing at the course down the street. Oops, sorry OJ, you fuckwad. Guess your handicap is screwed unless there’s a penitentiary somewhere in Nevada with a greenskeeper.

At work today, I was realizing something about my so-called career. You know the shit I do during the day to pay the bills when I should be avoiding the procrastination that’s about 43 years in and has prevented me from doing anything I ever dreamed of doing. The regular, stifling 9-5 gig. Yeah, that job.

What I was thinking is that surprisingly, given that I don’t fucking mean to do so, I keep stumbling into the latest and greatest of a certain non-money-making sector. I mean, dig it, right now, I’m working in the same field where Gates, Buffet, Bono and Clinton are making headlines and keeping magazine sections busy. Granted, no pun intended, I’m approximately 3 thousand or million or so species down on the food chain.

Back in the day, I ran the adding machine tape on the multi-millions of the original human genome project. Breast cancer genes, chicks getting fewer radical mastectomies when the data showed it was crazy unnecessary, I’ve worked near some interesting shit. Shaking hands with Nobel-Prize winners for years and now in whole new social science disciplines.

Whatever, not my success, but I was there, I guess.

In the present day, I might be getting a bit of thrill from the proximity of others’ accomplishments, though. With the apparently burgeoning and exciting field of good works, I’m closer than I ever was. And if saving the world is part of the new wave, it looks like I might be able to ride the crest into seeing more of the blue marble. Leastways, a fortune cookie and some budget projections look like there’s a chance of travel in my future.

Of course, the irony is that after my last vacation, I eased into enough comfort to make me not want to leave the house.

Today’s lunch topic was fear. It started with the bees swarming the fajitas, and went on to the usual spiders and snakes.

I don’t really have any of your fear of things type deals. I’m much to much in the old skull pan most of the time. In the conversation, I realized I’m alright with shit that co-habitates on the planet I’ve felt the muscle contracting cool dead but alive coil of a pet snake. I’ve made tarantulas smile for a camera close up. I vanquished mice in Pat’s old cellar, while she took refuge alternately from kitchen chair to a locked bathroom.

I’ve seen death. Too many funerals, wakes and dealing with loss. I’ve hated it, and it freaked me out, but the emotion wasn’t fear.

Nope. But, people, living human beings on the planet scare the ever-loving shit out of me. People are my phobia.

In my old place, living alone in the city, I would self-consciously lie awake at night listening for the sounds of the dreaded home invasion. Robbers, homeless, roving teenagers with time and restlessness. A fist or two-by-four, tinkling glass and my patio door breached. It was the vulnerability and the solitude. the creeping fear that no one would find my broken body for days or weeks. No one would hear my screams.

Although, with the houses being about two inches apart in my old neighborhood and my neighbor living above, they could probably hear me fart. Judging by our backyard neighbors, someone would have heard. They might have closed the windows and gone back to bed, but that wasn’t really part of my fear scenario.

Completely inappropriately, because I apparently have no impulse control, my jest at the lunch table was that now I fear domestic abuse. I’m officially an asshole.

Truth is my ultimate fear still lingers, and it is a fear of people. Speaking to them, interacting with them, you know, like having a normal life. Inside my head, I will always be the shy little girl who couldn’t pick out her penny candy and bring it to the cash register. The same freak of nature who was essentially too shy to even ask to go to the bathroom. To this day, I have Kegel muscles to rival a Thai hooker in a freak show.

Every now and again, I still have a simultaneous translation going on in my head like I’m speaking through a UN interpreter. I am capable of measuring every syllable before it’s spoken while speaking naturally. The plus side is I occasionally appear rather thoughtful and measured in an intelligent, wise kind of way. Rather than the actual, slow, social retard kind of way.

I’ve compensated for so long, and thanks to the insanity of going on stage, increasingly I’m getting to a more natural oneness, where words come out as they are thought. But, I still ask for and apologize for crazy shit. I think M. hates it when I ask permission to eat an item of our shared food, or thank him for something we both bought. But, really, how the fuck do you give someone shit for civility. Even batshit crazy civility.

The only puzzle to this little bit of neurosis and phobia is that I over think a whole lot of my words. Written, oral, screamed and whispered. Still and all, I’ve gotten in trouble for them. I’m clearly a very advanced shithead.

What scares the pee out of your urethra?

Technorati Tags: alone, shyness, phobia, fear

So I did update some photos from earlier this month. Not much to say about them. They are here and http://dee-rob.com/zenphoto/Rancho_San_Antonio9-3-07/

One day, M. went out to run and came back to talk about cars, so we headed over to see the very tail end of an old cars gathering. Here’s my future Austin Healey:

Here’s something I think is like my brother’s project:

Then there was another outing with wildlife.

M. got up early-ish this morning to get his car serviced, his hair trimmed and whatever the hell else he does when he’s alone. So it was a rare Saturday morning when I had fuck all to do and no one with whom to do it.

He did call, though, and let me know he passed a local yard sale about a block away from our place. I ended up buying this item for a buck.

The best part was walking back to the house, including crossing a major street, looking like a serial killer strolling back from a spree.

Meanwhile, I should be using the time for a couple of things, writing and laundry. Unfortunately, someone else had the laundry idea, and I’m a fucking lazy, stupid, procrastinating shit at the writing. I have to work on that.

I think I’m going to update some pictures I still have lying around from last weekend and maybe jam them up on the old WWW.

Should be sleeping, and can’t think of writing.

So, here’s this:

Technorati Tags: California, lizard, photo

Some of you might know, because I bragged about it, that I was one of the earliest adopters of the iPhone. Would have been earlier if I still lived on the other coast. (Although, who knows, that East Coast me might have bailed on it.)

Anywho, with the price drop, I’m philosophical. I can afford a $600 phone. No one suffered or died, no bills went unpaid, blah fucking blah.

I am, to the core, my mother’s daughter, though. I knows me the value of a dollar or a dime or two. I bought the toy with American Express, and for me, and a whole slew of other nerds and poseurs, the card of membership privilege is looking into whether they’re going to afford me some buyer protection. They might credit me up the 2 bills I’m missing.

Otherwise, I was planning to buy Leopard, the revamp of Mac’s operating system, when it comes out next month. I guess the promised face-saving by Steve Jobs credit will make that a wash.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, money, Steve Jobs