Category: living

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I have been in San Francisco on several occasions when a nearly nude man will be walking around with the barest of fig leafs leaving his genitals clearly visible. My San Francisco friends informed me that this is perfectly legal and happened all of the time. I tried to confirm the legality when I started to write this blog because I know that things are changing in the city but was left with a lot of ambiguous information. From what I could learn, it isn’t exactly legal and it isn’t exactly illegal.

My San Francisco friends supported these men’s rights to walk around nearly nude. They thought that they should be free to do what they want. I was uncomfortable with both the naked man and their response. At the time I was unable to enunciate my disagreement. After thinking about for some time, years in fact, I think I have figured out what I want to say.

I knew if I had small children I wouldn’t want them to see it. Not because the child would be traumatized either. I am sure that most children wouldn’t even remember it happening the next day. On the other hand, it might require some awkward explanation on why the man is walking around the streets of a city naked. Like is it all right for me to walk around naked?

Well, it isn’t all right to walk around naked in most places. It might not even be all right in San Francisco. It seems more like San Franciscan cops have given up on enforcing the law as opposed to it actually being legal which is a nuanced position for parents to make. Yes it is a rule Johnny but it is too difficult to enforce so people don’t get in trouble for doing it. Does that make sense to you? Of course, it doesn’t.

And yes this is small potatoes. In a city like San Fransisco there are bigger problems for the cops to deal with. It is a nuisance more than a crime. It is one of the hundreds of small annoyances that people in a city encounter. It requires self policing from individuals and that is what isn’t happening.

There is an extremely small number of San Franciscans who want to walk around with their dicks hanging out. I hardly ever see it. The mass of San Franciscans I have seen almost always have their clothes on. I am talking 99.99 %. It is irritating that this infinitesimally small number of people feel the need to indulge their exhibitionist tendencies for the rest of us to see. It isn’t very neighborly.

There are plenty of places — nude beaches, nudist camps, your own home — you can walk around nude. And then there are also plenty of places where you don’t. You wouldn’t walk into a school nude. Or a restaurant. Or a museum. Or a church. So, even the most free thinking of individuals set limits to when people should walk around naked. The argument then is where to draw the line.

Living in big cities means you are around thousands of people with different ideas of how to behave. We should try to get along as best we can. This means I agree to not being able to do everything I want to do. So, for example, I don’t play music loudly. Now, I may want to play my music loudly but I won’t because I know that I might bother my neighbors. I want to get along with my neighbors so I don’t listen to music loudly.

These men need to face the fact that some people might not want to see their junk and keep that in mind when they go on one of their strolls. Being a good neighbor isn’t that hard, and I’m willing to give up these really minor freedoms to live in a big city. Because I really enjoy living in a big city and, to continue to enjoy this experience, I want to be a good neighbor. I wish everyone would.

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We have two cats — Chloe and Cisco. When we first got them, Cisco would finish first and then nudge Chloe away from her bowl. This didn’t seem to bother her and she would pretty much surrender her food to Cisco. Bob got into the habit of standing in between them so Chloe wouldn’t be bullied away from her share of the food.

Bob proved to be a successful block to Cisco. Cisco stopped trying to bully Chloe away from her bowl. What is weird is that the no longer harassed Chloe can eat her meal without Cisco’s looming presence threatening her but now she always, and I mean always, leaves a little of her meal for Cisco. How did they come to this arrangement?

I am told that in every living situation with more than one animal that there is an Alpha who takes over. Cisco is definitely bigger and stronger than Chloe but she is smarter, faster and more athletic. She can get away from him with ease. Despite this somewhat equal distribution of talents, Cisco is still the boss. But why? Who told them?

It baffles me that they have come to an agreement about this. It seems to work for them but the process is a mystery. Surely, on occasion she comes across a food that she likes more than the others and wouldn’t she want to eat her full bowl — just because she likes it more. But, no every single time, she leaves Cisco something. The mystery of nature.

Chloe is the black one and Cisco is the grey one.

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As you might know, Bob and I are in the process of moving house, so we are furiously throwing away stuff. I found my high school diploma today with a holy card from Monsignor Koch. For those of you who doubt whether I graduated high school, see below. Read it and weep. It’s official and you can’t take that away from me.

Why, at 67 years of age, am I having trouble giving up my high school diploma. Never has any of my employers asked to see it nor did the colleges and universities I attended. I don’t even see the point of giving it to me at 18. It has been sitting in a drawer since then. A new draw ever few years, but a drawer nonetheless.

And the holy card. I didn’t even know who Monsignor Koch was when I was in high school. I vaguely remember the name but what he did and why he gave me a holy card is a complete mystery today.

It was sort of an accomplishment for me. I can’t tell you how bad a student I was in high school. About all I did was show up and that was mostly because my Mom herded us out the door every morning and wouldn’t put up with anything remotely close to ditching school. The only reason I made it through was mid-way through my Sophomore year, I discovered marijuana and thus was able to survive my remaining years in what for me was this educational prison. I hated it more than any other experience in my life.

Yet, I can’t seem to throw them out.

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Back in July, I introduced my first household tip, I am now ready for my second. The gap in time should give you some hint on how seriously I take household chores.

Bob and I are getting ready to move so we are getting rid of our unused possessions at a prodigious pace. One of our tasks in this process is a garage sale. I know Tom and Garage Sale would seem like contradictory concepts as there is nothing more than I hate then talking with strangers and selling shit but a guy has got to do what a guy has got to do.

So yesterday, we found some sterling silver utensils which we forgot about on a frequent basis. We usually discover them when we are trying to get rid of stuff. Decide to save them because they are silver and have sentimental value. Before they get tossed back into the drawer, I polish them in order to make them ready for the next time we use them. Which is admittedly rare, I mean do you really want to use silver when tossing a salad that you are going to then eat in front of the TV. It seems a bit over the top.

Which means they get polished, thrown in the drawer and promptly forgotten until next household purging event. Of course, they are tarnished and require polishing.

Any way, we found these tarnished beauties and we were faced with the question — do we keep or do we garage sale. But before deciding, I had to polish which is depressing because I hate polishing silver. So I do what I always do when faced with an easy but hateful tasks, I smoked a joint, got suitably mindless for this mindless task and polished those mother fuckers.

I am not sure why. I worked really hard on this. At least twenty minutes, maybe even a half of an hour. and the results were somewhat disappointing. First, the silver on the left turned out a lot better than the silver on the right. The silver on the right, from my eyes, don’t look like they’ve been polished at all. Both had stubborn stains I couldn’t remove and the blemishes in the silver would make me think twice before bringing them out for Thanksgiving Dinner.

Which brings me to my question. Why does anybody uses silver? It doesn’t look all that great and it is difficult to take care of. Stainless steel is much cheaper than silver and much easier to clean. I could have washed all the dishes from a 4 person dinner in the time I polished these 4 utensils and 2 of them, in my humble opinion, still look like shit. What a waste of time.

If I have any say in the matter these are going into the garage sale. My judgment on polishing silver is don’t.

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A few backs I reported that my spider, who very cleverly incorporated the light cord on our porch into her web, is missing. I looked at the light cord the other day and saw this:

She is back. Or one of her daughters is. Although she has irritated me a little because I now have to stand on my tippy toes to reach the cord but it is a small price to pay to work with such a creative animal.

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I am about to confess something horrible about myself. I am warning you in case you want to opt out of further reading. I totally understand. Nobody likes to hear people’s confessions. Oh you think it will be fun at first, hearing people’s deepest darkest secrets but I am pretty sure it turns in to repetitive stories about self abuse on lonely Saturday nights and deliberately not ringing up an item at the self check out at the grocery store. So, believe me I understand. 

Any way my confession. Bob and I are looking into pre-paying our funerals because, well, I am told it is the right thing to do. I agree in principle but I am finding myself really reluctant to commit. It isn’t fear about talking about death either which would be a legitimate reason for avoiding the purchase. I, in fact, researched the costs with three different companies and talked in more depth with one woman. 

No, it isn’t fear. It is greed. Every time I think about paying for my funeral I think why I am paying for this? Shouldn’t my heirs? I mean I am giving them money, the least they can do is pay for my funeral. I would much rather they take it out of their cut from my will than for me to give up the money now when I can be buying expensive cocktails at overpriced restaurants.

Furthermore, what do I care about disposing of my body. I mean. Shit. I am dead. Do I have to do everything? Do what ever you want with my body but really why should I spend the precious time I have left figuring that out. Fuck it. All I can say is – if you can have some fun with my dead body, have at it as nothing would please me more than knowing that my body came in handy for a few practical jokes. Otherwise, who cares and why should I be the one to do something about it? What are they going do about if I don’t, I will be dead. 

I can’t get the proper motivation to do anything about it. I know this sounds terrible. The reoccurring explanation for pre-planning is do you want your loved ones, who are in mourning, to figure this all out during this really sad, possibly traumatic, moment in their life and, again, I am sorry to say, yeah why not. I mean their day has already been ruined with my death. Why should I ruin my day too by paying for it. Besides, planning my funeral might give them an opportunity to take their minds off the large empty void my absence will cause in their lives and focus on something really important — getting me in the ground so they can go out and spend whatever is left of my 401K. And, since I am already making confessions and this make me even a worse person, I am genuinely planning to have no money left when I leave this mortal coil. So I will be sticking my heirs with the full funeral costs out of their pocket book. Sorry heirs.

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My nickname among my friends in high school was Space King which was due to the likely experience of finding me high anytime you encountered me. I am surprised that I even graduated given the minimal amount of time I put into my studies. My parents were confused too as my fairly poor grades did not reflect all the time I put in at the public library. I think it was their sly way of letting me know they knew what was really going on. I really think my mother was deliberately trying to annoy when she asked me return her library books because that meant I had to actually go to the library.

Despite fully embracing drug taking, I never wanted to be known as a drug dealer. I avoided crossing this particular line. I might sell a joint or two as a friendly gesture but a joint or two was not a drug dealer. I never got into the habit of buying large quantities of pot so that I could sell the excess. Anyone who sold large quantities pretty quickly slipped into paranoia about who they were selling to. This was a different time and if the cops found even a joint on you, they could send you to prison for a long long time. Good friends could narc you out, particularly if the cops had found any drugs on them. The extra money never seemed worth the trouble to me.

But mostly I was interested in my reputation. I had political ambitions in my youth. If I sold dope, I knew some asshole would remember my ill-spent youth and put the kibosh on my political career. I don’t know why I thought that this would protect my image. I mean people didn’t call me Space King for nothing.

Any way, I kind of reformed when I went to college. I reduce my drug taking to an occasional puff of marijuana and I began to study because I realized that being a pot head was going to limit my options. I was a new man. Unfortunately my reputation preceded me. I was seating in the college library actually studying for an exam when a woman I went to high school with approached me. This was a woman who I barely knew. I don’t think we said two words together the whole four years of high school. I thought it was odd but maybe she thought we attended a small high school and we were at a large university now, maybe she was looking for a friendly face. Boy was I wrong. She pretty quickly explained she had a big test tomorrow and needed some speed and wanted to know if could sell her some.

I was devastated. All that time I sacrificed making extra money was for nothing. Despite everything, I still had a reputation of being a dealer. I tried to be mad at her but I just ended up laughing. She explained that everyone knew I was big dope taker in high school and she just assumed that I would still know how to get them. She told me she would cross me off her list as possible speed suppliers. I was eternally grateful for her consideration but I fear the damage was done. I guess you can take the Space King out of the opium den but you can’t take the opium den out of the Space King. That is also is when I decided my political career was finished. The Democratic Party has never recovered from this loss but I did save them the awkward press conference when I would admit to being Space King.