ROYAL RESIDENCE 12 ================================================================= THE ROYAL RESIDENCE ================================================================= 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. =================================================================