A cutting from Mark’s site.

“Ingested today:

– 2 cups of coffee (with cream and sugar)
– 1 Snickers bar
– 9 Wintergeen Altoids
– 2 Spearmint Altoids

It is now almost four in the afternoon and the walls are starting to look furry. ”

2:03 p.m.

“Georgia O’Keefe was not a flower painter.” (From the introduction to a book of her paintings titled One Hundred Flowers.)

3:06 p.m.

When the sky is blue and clear in San Francisco, it’s cause for comment. “Such a beautiful day,” I said. Then I felt something flutter over my feet. I looked down at the swirling newspaper and napkins littering the sidewalk. I stepped delicately over a discarded condom. “Yeah,” he said. “It sure is.”

10:45 a.m.

Yesterday we got to go home early because of the power shortage. Rolling blackouts are the Californian equivalent of snow days.

2:01 p.m.

The best headlines from this month’s Martha Stewart Living:

  • Putting Baking Stones to Use
  • Why Scald Milk?
  • Arrangement of the Month: Forsythia Fan

11:52 a.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: Med school epiphanies and my bony ass.

Excerpt:

“I learned how to calculate my body mass index today. There’s overweight,
obese I, obese II, and obese III. After that, there’s just a picture of
Jabba the Hut.

Take your weight in lbs. as the numerator.
Divide by your height in inches, squared (e.g. if you’re 60″, that’s 3600
inches squared). Take this number and multiply it times 703. If its greater than
than 25, it’s time to get your fat ass to Gold’s (me). If it’s less than 18, it’s
time to get your bony ass to Sizzler (you).”

3:23 p.m.

From Accidental:

100 Ways to say I LOVE YOU: I’m still waiting for “100 Ways
to say LET’S JUST BE FRIENDS,” or “100 Ways to say IT’S
NOT YOU, IT’S ME.” Or how about “100 Ways to say I
DON’T REALLY LIKE YOU, BUT WE CAN STILL HAVE
SEX.” That’s the clincher, in my book.”

10:05 a.m.

From Magnificent Melting Object:
“Rasbliutto means ‘the feeling you feel for someone you once loved’ in Russian.”

3:11 p.m.

I did the Geary Street pub crawl for St. Patrick’s Day. My friend and I were standing in a sea of drunken green men, and I mentioned that I wanted to get rid of my gum. An earnest looking young man held his hand out below my mouth. I pulled my eyebrows together, but he just nodded and pushed his palm closer to my chin. So I gave a “your idea, buddy” shrug and spit my gum into his hand. He dropped it and pushed on through the crowd. He dropped it on my shoe.

9:42 a.m.

Those of you who don’t live in a big city should know that bike messengers are cooler than you. They don’t care about getting hurt, they don’t care about getting dead, and they don’t make eye contact with anyone but the brethren. Their style is a sort of studied rejection of trends: Frayed jeans hacked off at the knee, old T-shirts, gravel-conditioned helmets, and the standard tattoos and piercings.

Imagine my surprise then, when I saw vanilla-collegiate guy sporting a Timbuktu bag with several messenger tubes protruding, and the identifying walkie-talkie attached to its strap. He was wearing a navy blue polo shirt, a pair of short-leg Gap khakis with cargo pockets, and some Van-like biking shoes. Beh? I had to resist approaching him. “Excuse me sir, do you have a tattoo on the inside of your lower lip? No? Perhaps a tongue stud? Some faint facial scars? No… Sweet mother of God. Is that gel in your hair?”

12:13 p.m.

We just launched Web Techniques Daily (ie: the Web Tech Blog). I’ll be posting there pretty frequently, so if you want to see what I look like in semi-professional mode, head on over.

2:45 p.m.

This has been around for awhile, but have you seen Heavy Metal Parking Lot? This guy took a video camera into the parking lot of a Judas Priest concert in the ’80s and interviewed concert goers. The best part is when a girl tells the camera that she’s 13, the guy standing next to her says he’s 21, then he gives her a deep, tongue-intensive kiss for the camera. I’ve rarely experienced something so simultaneously chilling and hilarious. Well, maybe that “Making of Growing Pains” thing I watched a few days ago, but still.

10:39 a.m.

Astute observation from Strangebrew:
“If I can only give you one piece of advice, it’s this: don’t put a unicorn lover in charge of the decorations.”

2:52 p.m.

There are good people and there are bad people: Thief steals man’s $15,000 artificial leg out of car. Also, teachers are citing 6 year olds for sexual harassment now. Ow. Someone make it stop.

9:55 a.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

From: A guy who reads my blog

Subject: Bloggers say the darndest things

qt_freak:

Damn, I like your site, it’s pretty funny. If only you had more substance to it. A better lay out would be cool too, but yeah, just saying you have a fan.

Me:

Hi, thanks for the note. I clicked around your site a
little bit. Just like you, I’m a big Slurpee fan.
Jesus, we’re like the same person. Well, except that
I’m not big into “dressing up like a ninja and tagging
your mother’s bearded biscuit from the back.” But I’m
funny that way.

[Now he’s plugged me, and I’ve plugged him. I’m sitting back and saying a little prayer to the absurdity gods that I get audience overlap with a site that has a “Bitch of the Week” feature. Rad.]

2:14 p.m.

My knee is knee shaped again. When I stand, I no longer feel extraneous fluid rush down my leg. These are good things. For those of you who don’t care, here’s some Etch-a-sketch art. Callous bastards.

9:18 a.m.

“I’m a sensitive guy. Some guys drink beer and write their name in the snow, I drink herbal tea and write haiku poetry in the snow.”
(The Very Strange World of John Saleeby)

12:46 p.m.

Mark’s friend had just interviewed Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours. Mark was kind enough to send me the interview, soon to be published in Abercrombie and Fitch Quarterly (Beh?), and it had one line that particularly struck me: “I still find myself walking on a street I walk every day, looking around and
thinking, ‘My god, it’s like this.'”

9:20 a.m.