Sunday, June 29, 2008

You get used to it


The picture shows Northern California today. That white stuff isn't clouds. It's smoke. The whole damn state smells like smoke. The little red spots, if you can see them, are known active fires. There are hundred of fires that are not being fought because there's no one to fight them. There's speculation that there may be hundreds of fires that no one even knows about, because they are in remote areas. The fire season usually starts in late summer and peaks by October. At the rate we're going, everything flammable will be burnt by then.

Personally, I had an OK Day. I just started a book called Weaveworld by Clive Barker. I'm pretty new to Barker. I bought the book on the strength of a short story by him and because of his introduction, which includes one of the finest single pages of writing I've ever read. I avoided the mobs in San Fran for the LGBT, and, I believe, Q parade. I'm glad we have that celebration and I'm glad I don't have to drive in it, or look for parking spaces in it or drive a bus with drunken gay teenagers back to suburbia. I've done those things. It sucked.

This, by the way, is not some heterosexist prejudice on my part. I ran into my friend, Phil, last night. Phil moved to SF a while ago. I don't see as much of him as I'd like. He is very openly gay, a leatherman and an active part of the leather scene. He's as good a fellow as it's ever been my privilege to know. I'm not saying this to show how tolerant I am of gay dudes. You can ask almost anyone who knows him. Phil is something special.

"Phil," I said, "To what do we owe this pleasure?""

"Gay pride weekend." He replied.

"But that's in San Francisco!" Says I.

"I know. I can't stand the fucking traffic."
Get to know The Handsome Family. If Jorge Luis Borges wrote country songs, he would have sounded like The Handsome Family.

2 comments:

mwhybark said...

Did I tell you this? I think I did. Stonewall, on Christopher Street in NYC, where Pride began, has a facde built oof Hoosier limestone.

If you cross the street to Marie's Crisis Cafe, you can see a plaque comemmorating the locale as the place where Thom Paine breathed his last.

Thom Paine's ghost stood with the people of Christopher Street on that day, some fortyish age ago.

Your driver said...

No, you never told me that, but Hoosier limestone plays such a large part in NYC architecture. I don't doubt that Thom was there.

FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed