the skinny

Here are the top ten important developments in my life, presented in descending order of importance.

1) I am engaged to be married.

2) I am currently running the hotel boycott for UNITE HERE Local 2 in San Francisco.

3) I am applying to law school.

4) I have officially been exercising at a gym for the last whole, entire year. There is no visible change. Except it hasn't prevented me from losing a little more hair.

5)...which brings me to number five. I am losing my hair, slowly. Folks who've known me for a long time probably won't notice the difference. I could give a fuck, frankly. Just like to get it out in the open.

6) Having achieved some vague proficiency on the guitar, I'm now learning the mandolin. If necessary, go ahead and read that sentence again.

7) After you've prepared the various ingredients of an egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwich, you can't just slap them together and eat it. You have to give the sandwich ingredients some time to get to know each other. The whole thing has to pull together and accept that it's a sandwich, and not separate breakfast (or in my case, dinner) ingredients. I can't stress this enough. In fact, if I was making this list again, I'd put this one higher. Dammit.

8) Achewood. Achewood Achewood Achewood. Achewood.

9) There's a lot more fake meat in my diet now. Between Morningstar Farms, which makes eerily believable bacon and sausage, and Golden Era on O'Farrell St., this has been a banner year for suspended disbelief. Of course, I have no clue how close in taste and texture this stuff really is, since it's been so long since I ate the real thing. It'd be like if someone gave me a fake Squeeze-It (TM) and asked me to compare it to the real thing. It's just been too long, man.

10) Our cat has developed into a bloodthirsty biting machine. Compare and contrast the following:

Scene from 998 Divisadero, #201, ca. 12/04:

Alek: Hey, furball. You look like you wanna wrestle. Huh? (waves arms in cat's face) Wanna wrestle? Oh, you're getting in some good chomps now. Yeah, you're chomping good now. (to fiance) Hey, check out Chompsky over here.

Camille: (silence)

Alek: She's manufacturing some serious consent! (beat) Chompsky!!

Camille: (sighs)


Scene from 998 Divisadero, #201, ca. 12/05:

Alek: Okay, I'm going to get up and take a shower...

(pause)

...Ow! Oowww!!!! Stop attacking my calves! Get, off! Ow, fuck!! That hurt, goddamnit!

Camille: What's going on?

Alek: Nothing, just -- (dull thud) -- Son of a BITCH!

Camille: ... are you OK?

Alek: I hit my head on the door.

(pause)

Alek: Stop biting me!