ROYAL RESIDENCE 12
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THE ROYAL RESIDENCE
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NOTE: If you're on the mailing list for these rants and haven't
gotten numbers 10 and 11, tell me Note that my
address header is anti-spammed.
I left a UNIX-based ISP because they are charging way too much for a
shell account. Now I have to be modern and use Windoze and wiggle
arrows around a screen instead of tapping a few keys. It all takes
more time to do less and is not, in my unhumble opinion, progress. It
all happened because a bunch of [US] public school-educated picture
readers decided to forego the written language for glyphs.
Unfortunately for us wordsmiths, they became programmers and opened
the gates of Hell.
This is episode twelve. Doreen called me up last Sunday
afternoon. Knowing I can almost always put anybody up to
something, he said he was hungry as all getout; what could we do?
We couldn't go to the fast food strip on Powell Street because
Doreen is a veggiehead. We ended up in San Francisco Centre at
the soup and sandwich place. I asked for an egg salad sandwich.
The cuntlet behind the counter said they didn't have any. Hmmph.
Tuna Dynasty didn't sound quite right to me. I was also afraid
their pastrami would be past it. She was crestfallen when I said
I only wanted a small bowl of lentil soup.
Doreen had some sort of veggiehead sandwich from which he
indignantly yanked the ancient avocado pieces saying how he hates
avocado. Funny, I could at least tolerate avocado. It's the
pubes-like sprouts I can't stand. Doreen began telling me about
the guy he met at the dance club. They have a basis. The guy
works for a well-known motion picture effects company and makes
scads of money. Doreen wailed that her dreamboat was keeping up
with the American dream -- not to mention the Chans and the
Mendozas -- by making more in annualized thousands than he has
years of age. Doreen isn't keeping up with that and is
depressed. Well, honey, even in economic relationships, somebody
has to be the bottom.
Max Marin and Doreen danced the night away, liberally sweating
all over each other, touching peepees, and generally acting in
ways not approved by Sunday school teachers and nuns. Max got
warm enough for Doreen's form to want to take him home. Doreen
doesn't go home with strange men at dance clubs. Max might have
been disappointed but remained hopeful enough to give Doreen his
phone number. On my advice, Doreen is going to have him over for
dinner, which isn't the same as having him for dinner but it will
do for now. Doreen is nervous. I had to remind him the way to
grope a man's hardon is still to reach through his esophagus.
When I expressed my hope Max would be so thrilled he would fuck
Doreen til he bled, Doreen had to go.
As we departed SF Centre, Doreen saw the extremely buffed model
on a poster in Abercrombie & Fitch's window. Doreen wants to
have a body like that, one which reminds me of a cyborg or robot
made only of steely bone covered by perfect muscles and signal
lines disguised as veins, synthetic skin-like membrane over all.
I reminded Doreen he will never have that sort of muscularity
because the model and he are not of the same body type. The
model dude is the type who will put on fat only with great
difficulty and then only subcutaneously whereas Doreen is more
rounded and marbled -- something like a prize heifer. I, on the
other hand, play neither of these games. I am Miss Prole Fatty
Tissue of 1944. I have more rolls than most bakeries.
Alexander from next door and I have had some amusing
conversations lately. Alexander leaves his door open part of the
time, probably to get some air circulation. Alexander is into
Spiritualism, on the crackpot fringe of Christianity. They are
the church famous for mediums and seances. Alexander also
belongs to the Religious Science sect. He says most people who
go in for one also go in for the other. I wonder what the lights
of both sects would say of this opinion.
Alexander says he belonged to the Hollywood congregation of the
Religious Science church and knew such dramatic luminaries as
Gloria Swanson and Mae West. I had been told by a practicing
Spiritualist and medium I knew in Phoenix that Mae West was a
Spiritualist. Jimmy also told me Miss West took at least one
enema every day. How nice. Jimmy the medium is gay as pink ink.
Alexander is also -- when I see him, my gaydar reaches a
deafening pitch. Even so, Alexander will not admit to being a
sistah. He does admit to running with notorious fag hags, most
of whom appear to be associated with either the Spiritualists or
the Religious Scientists. Fag hags must be dying out. He said
the coven of them who used to meet in the public rooms of a
nearby hotel no longer do so because there aren't enough of them
left to pay the rental.
Alexander HATES San Francisco. He wants to go back to El Lay.
He grew up in Seattle and saw both his grandmother and his mother
"hideously" struck down in automobile accidents. (And they think
SF drivers are terrible...) Alexander says his family is working
through a great deal of bad karma. He says they all were
exceedingly cruel to each other; they lived violently and met
violent ends. He is anxious to be done with this life so he can
progress to a better one, learn more, and ultimately become truly
spiritual. To this end he has tattooed upon his chest in half-
inch letters, In Case of Emergency Do Not Resuscitate. Alexander
escaped from home at the tender age of thirteen.
He took up with some well-heeled Mexican nationals who offered
him a trip to Mexico and to work for them playing piano in their
chain of clubs. After he arrived there he found the clubs were
actually sporting houses. The men recruited young women to
reside in these bordellos and made the hookerettes dependent upon
them by getting them hooked on black tar heroin. Alexander was
afraid for what they might do to him if he tried to run away or
squawk. He kept his mouth shut and played that whorehouse
pianna.
It's time for this week's Curb Cut Rant. Of one hundred curb
cuts in San Francisco--
20 will be excellent
20 will be good
20 will be fair
20 will be poor
20 will be dangerous
An excellent cut is one which is at least three feet long from
its beginning on the sidewalk to its termination at the gutter.
It will be thirty inches wide and will join the gutter or road
bed with a maximum of one-fourth inch of drop. The road bed will
not have a crown.
A good cut is two feet long and has a half inch or less drop at
the curb/road joint. The road will have a gentle crown, less
than one foot in twenty in rise.
A good cut gets downgraded to fair when the useful part of it is
curved or cupped or the drop at gutter level is greater than a
half inch.
To become a poor cut, add severe road rounding or crown at the
bottom and/or shorten the length of the cut ramp to less than two
feet.
A dangerous cut is one more narrow than two feet, shorter than
two feet, one where cut and road crown together make a vee, or
which has a curb/roadbed joint drop of greater than three-quarter
inch.
The ramp of the curb cut is not supposed to be greater than nine
degrees. Most ramps are more steep than this. All other
characteristics can be excellent and a cut can be graded by me as
dangerous if the rise is greater than one foot in four of length.
Any given block can have four cuts with each cut of a different
grade. The really good cuts will be on the "money" corners, the
ones closest to the displays or the entrance areas of the
buildings. "Look how nize we are to our less fortunate neighbors
(even though they probably will never buy anything here with
their pitiful pittance income)." I have recently used auto
driveways within six feet of lousy curb cuts and found them much
easier on my back and butt, not to mention the frame of my chair.
This is fucking preposterous, to have mandated aids to the
handicapped of such poor design that adjacent roll curbs are
safer and more comfortable!
Take the block of Ellis/O'Farrell-Mason/Taylor. This block is
taken up entirely by the Hilton Hotel. The main entrance is on
the north side, O'Farrell. The cuts are good on the west and
excellent on the east. The carriage entrance is on Mason. The
cut at the bottom of Mason is good. The garage and delivery
drives are on the south on Ellis. The cut on the corner of Ellis
at Taylor is miserable.
The west side of the complex is nothing but employee entrances
and fire escape doors. The sidewalk on that side is recent
construction but is the most uneven I have see so far. Each
block of it leans a different direction and most of it leans
toward the gutter. This crap would be tiresome for four-footed
people to traverse. I suppose this is an effort to keep wino pee
from settling into the foundation and rotting the masonry. On
the south, the drives are separated by bits of sidewalk mostly
taken up with large manhole covers. The south sidewalk is an
interesting ride at speed with the driveways going up and down
not to mention the thrill of running over the rippled manhole
covers.
Cuts can be wonderfully designed and be located astonishingly
poorly. One close by which I would use daily is too dangerous
because it is out of the crosswalk area and is on a right turn
only lane -- a very busy lane with as many tour buses and crazy
taxi drivers as private citizens who don't deserve licensing. I
choose to live and so I go around the block to stay away from
this madhouse intersection.
You can tell from the orientation of the Hilton Hotel building
that it is geared up for battle. The west and south sides butt
up to the real start of the notorious Tenderloin district. The
west side is windowless and vacant-looking. The south side is
all garage-y. And they have the rudest garage people I have ever
seen. There are at least four portals back there. When a
tardvan came to pick me up and could not park in our white zone,
it pulled up over there. The garage lackey had a severe shit fit
even though there wasn't a vulgar limo in sight. It took all of
three minutes to board me and no one was in the slightest
inconvenienced. Lackey had the nerve to want a tip -- for
exactly what (beside being a pain in the ass) I would like to
know. /queen mode on/ When you come to the Royal Court, if We
find out you are registered at the Hilton, We will send you to
the dungeon -- and you will NOT have a good time. /queen mode
off/
As I toodle off the back way to get to Market Street, I now find
one of my favorite curb cuts blocked by sweaty men and some big
machines who are doing windows at the Crown Royale. I have to
use a truly terrible curb cut on the back side of the Crown or
cut through their carriage entrance/garage mess. I DARE any of
their monkey-suited thralls to say one goddam fucking word to me!
Mr Cheez and I have been in once already to see the manager about
window washers blocking curb cuts. This work is something more
major. At least the machines are much bigger and cannot be moved
away from the corner. /queen mode back on/ We will indulge them
for now, but not forever. /queen mode off again/
Another of my joys of daily living are people who ride bicycles
on the sidewalk. Skateboard crazies usually give me a wide berth
because they know they are sitting ducks. I have had the draft
kicked up by spokes caress my cheek just as I was starting into
the street. Bicyclists believe cuts are for their convenience in
breaking the law. The breeders have tried to convince the
cyclists the cuts are there for strollers. I think it is a lost
cause to try to convince either group these cuts are for us gimps
and not for them or their damned beer deliveries.
Pedestrians are quite stupid around gimp vehicles, too. I had
Little Miss Hamburger in her Chanel knock-off and gold heels (in
the daytime, no less) actually walk over my leg to get into the
curb cut ahead of me. She doesn't know how close she came to
having her Achille's tendon severed in an accident. When Cheezie
warned her, all she could do was say Fuck You. I get more
hostility than any other response from strangers. This isn't to
say I usually get any sort of response. Most people do their
damndest to pretend I don't exist. This is fine with me so long
as they don't cause an accident with their piggishness.
Mr Cheeze took me to lunch at Planet Hollywood, another theme-
packed overpriced hamburger place. Did they have us pegged, or
what? -- we were seated with the head and footboards of
Christopher and Christina Crawford's beds overhead and a silly
little blue harem number from the movie, Priscilla Queen of the
Desert. The wretched excess of this place, including the head-
pounding "music" track has more than anything else convinced me I
need to shop the farmer's markets and eat healthy food.
On my way to the Civic Center "Certified" Farmer's Market at UN
Plaza, Market and Seventh Streets, I got panhandled by some old
duffer in a powered wheelchair faster and fancier than mine! I
told him, Honey, you have electric wheels and you obviously have
a place to plug it in for a charge, why are you out here begging?
He whined he only gets US$900/month to live on. I took great
glee in telling him I have to make it on seven, and here is the
last day of the Glubdamn month and I still have sixteen dollars
to blow on tomatoes and strawberries. It's hard for me to feel
sorry for some of these fools. Oh, I guess it just goes with
other LLIs -- Life's Little Irritants -- such as getting gum on
my tires and having to run through barf.
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