Author: splicer

…and today is my first day as some­one else’s employ­ee in over two years.

So before I leave the apart­ment, I’d like to reflect on that love.

I enjoy San Fran­cis­co, and so do count­less oth­ers who vis­it here every year. I love show­ing the city to my friends who vis­it. I love help­ing tourists find their way to the par­tic­u­lar land­mark or attrac­tion they are try­ing to find. I love mak­ing the tourists’ stay a lit­tle more pleas­ant. OK, part of … Read the rest

I left by the back door
with my wife’s lover’s
smok­ing gun

It’s just beau­ti­ful how much infor­ma­tion can be passed in just a dozen words.

Reminds me of my favorite Brauti­gan short sto­ry, The Scar­lat­ti Tilt:

“It’s very hard to live in a stu­dio apart­ment in San Jose with a man who’s learn­ing to play the violin.” 

That’s what she told the police when she hand­ed them the emp­ty revolver.

See, that’s part of what I admire in a writer, and … Read the rest

I don’t know how I’ll ever do this.

One night in 1991 or ear­ly 1992 in Asheville, North Car­oli­na I was walk­ing home after the bars had closed down and kicked me out. I was very drunk and right after I turned onto Cum­ber­land Avenue I saw a pick­up truck parked on the first block. I’d seen that pick­up truck many times parked on the West side of Cum­ber­land, but I did­n’t know whose it was. Still don’t. The one thing … Read the rest

I received the news today that Frank Bren­nan passed away last night.

Frank was 80-some­thing years old. In his younger days he was a knock-down brawl­ing black­out drunk in the Mari­na. Those were the days when the Mari­na was a tough neigh­bor­hood filled with team­sters and long­shore­men, not a yup­pie neigh­bor­hood filled with frap­puc­ci­no-swill­ing cell­phone sym­biotes and jog­gers with boobjobs.

I used to see him around a lot, and he’d always greet peo­ple with his line: “be your own best … Read the rest

In my mind, I’m already spend­ing all the mon­ey I haven’t start­ed earn­ing because I haven’t even accept­ed the job yet.

I just spent about an hour on miniusa.com spec’ing out my dream car. Acces­soriz­ing a $17,000 car up to $34,000. Maybe I’d best pay off my cred­it card first.

BUT this is killer: if I don’t want a sun­roof, I can get the Coop­er Mini with the St. Andrew’s Cross on the roof.

He’s got

I nev­er stop being amazed by the total lack of lit­er­a­cy dis­played by the senders of unso­licit­ed com­mer­cial email. It’s as though no one sends spam who actu­al­ly got through the third grade.

BEST SPEL CHECKUR EVAR!!!! < — OK, I made that one up, and if I saw it I’d think it was inten­tion­al and clever. What’s worse is the copy­writ­ing that makes it clear that they are fog­gy on the concept.

INCREASE THE SIZE OF YOUR PENIS <— yeah, … Read the rest

Takin’ it one day at a time today. I need to get through today because tomor­row I get to col­lect mon­ey from a client. I ran out of mon­ey a cou­ple days ago, which is incon­ve­nient, but I ran out of cof­fee yes­ter­day and I’m hav­ing to get cre­ative to find stuff to eat. And that’s real­ly inconvenient.

I’m also meet­ing with a client tomor­row to see about work­ing for him full­time. He’s my only con­sis­tent client any­way, so this … Read the rest

That was my goal tonight on the tread­mill. Three miles in 30 min­utes. I start­ed at 4.0mph and prob­a­bly walked that for five min­utes as I got my Palm set to auto­mat­i­cal­ly scroll through my book. Then I went up to 6.5mph and slow­ly notched up to 7.0, then back down. When the timer hit 30 min­utes, I was at 3.13 miles. After the cool-down peri­od, I had reached … Read the rest

OK, I now have my new Wacom 6″ by 8″ “Plat­inum” Intuos2 tablet. It’s nice to be using a pen again.

They keep mak­ing the pens bet­ter. Here’s mine:

but if any­one wants to treat me nice for my birth­day (com­ing up in three months) I’d real­ly real­ly like to have this:

…which looks the same, but it’s actu­al­ly got a brushed met­al bar­rel instead of a plas­tic bar­rel made to look metal­lic. I can live with­out the eras­er … Read the rest

I just noticed that the “Amer­i­can Made” logo on the side of a can or Rock­star has a flag with 50 stars, but they’re con­fig­ured as five rows of ten stars, rather than the 9 rows inter­chang­ing five or six stars, and the flag only has 10 stripes, start­ing with red and end­ing with a white stripe.

It just seems weird. I mean, if you’re try­ing to sell soft drinks by appeal­ing to peo­ple’s patri­o­tism, why man­gle the flag and … Read the rest