Jimmy Stewart in Army Air Forces recruitment film

Anyway, when I first get there I do some cardio on the elliptical and while I'm chugging away with the "gym" playlist blaring I watch other people using the weight machines and generally freak out about their form. Usually I worry that someone is overextending their shoulders because that's my big problem. This woman today was really going for it. She was doing some kind of weighted arm raise (finishing with arms straight out to each side at shoulder height), and with each rise she'd strain onto her tip toes and throw her shoulders up and stick her chin out, and then jerk her arms up to the finish. Next she put her hands by her ears and started to thrust them up until her arms were going straight up to the ceiling. With each thrust to the sky, her chin flew forward, her back arched dramatically with her chest shoved way out, and again she'd jerk everything to get the hands up.

Maybe it’s a great way to get strong. I think it would kill me. I looked around for any trainers, maybe I could point one in her direction just in case, but there weren’t, and she disappeared.

Scents: somewhere in the middle of the negative arm of the scale, placed there due to the overly accessible, vast quantities that exist, are scented products. It is true that I do not want to smell you; I do not want to smell hairspray; I do not want to smell deodorant, fabric softener; I don't annoy the wafting bouquet of glade plug-ins, and I do not want to smell cologne from 10 feet away. But more than this, the chemical irritants in perfumed products are... chemical irritants; pollution that causes wheezing, runny noses, migraines, bleeding eyes, melting skin, exploding brains.

Rewarding irresponsibility: below scents, but above the lowest and meanest of ills sits the bailout of the irresponsible while the responsible sit by like polite fools. For example, a lot of people purchased homes they did not have the income to afford, with ARMs that they knew would reset to a rate they could not sustain. I don't mean those duped into it, but people who jumped in with a 0% down payment hoping to refinance in 2 years, thinking that the market could only ever go up. This in itself doesn't piss me off. It's a gamble that a lot of people took, and a lot of people lost. It happens. It sucks, but when it comes down to it, it was a bad investment. People make bad investments all the time. What pisses me off is this: aide plans where the lender would cut the principal of a troubled mortgage to 85% of a home's current, diminished market value, The FHA would take 5% of the new, lower amount as a fee, and homeowners would get the remaining 10% as equity to give them a stake in paying off the renegotiated mortgage.

You'd get 10% equity as a reward for making bad choices! What!? Awesome. Meanwhile, for those who decided against buying because it just didn’t seem like a sound idea, unspent savings now languish at wussily low interest rates, IRAs steadily decline, and food costs rise... ultimately penalized for not making irresponsible investments.

Deaf ignorance: that Celtic Woman/Thunder should be so low on a scale of societal ills should need no explanation. Do you think they sound pretty? I think their very existence is outrageously offensive. That so many people have so little understanding of the fundamentals of music that this crap satisfies musical appetites is astounding and horrifying. If you don't find yourself gesticulating wildly and spitting with anger upon hearing them, you need to take some music classes.

Willful stupidity: The lowest point on today's version of this index is the teaching of Creationism/Intelligent Design in public schools. Nothing pisses me off more.

Later for easy breasy Sunday night viewing I tried Because I Said So with DIane Keaton. Who doesn't love Diane Keaton? Well, whoever talked her into doing this movie must not. No one expects more than drivel from Mandy Moore, but pah-thet-ick. It's not a story that would happen in real life. It's not a story you wish would happen in real life. It's not even a story you'd bother to hope didn't happen in real life.

Good thing Law & Order is on 24/7 to serve me in my times of need. When I want bad acting, I'll ask for it.

From a BBC review: A bewildering combination of anthropomophic perversity and environmental polemic, all scored to cheesy pop hits.

Yah.

He's a fan of Transcendental Meditation “for a number of reasons,” he says.

She’s grown to appreciate Whitman (or was it Frost?) more as she’s gotten older (she is at least 20).

They love all the same books!

He says he really likes Emily Dickinson! She says… she’s never gotten into her. He restates, “Well, I don’t like her as much as the others…”

Of course.

I will have to listen to this for 7 hours. It’s been 10 minutes and they are exchanging their info now.

She’s been living in Lyon. She is very cosmopolitan. She is cultured and she reeks of poetry.

Oh my God! they love ALL the same things!

She is anti-technology and was anti-email… until she needed it… especially at the University of New York.

He likes writing letters – even though (because!) it’s a dying art (he would be pretentious if he weren’t so unfortunately earnest).

They both used to be into instant messenger, but gave it up when they got older.

She asks for club soda... wine has spilled on her offwhite linen (as expected).

This is all in the first half hour of the flight.

Her skin is so dry and wrinkled I want to cover her forehead and upper arms in lotion.

Another woman with no chin, upturned nose, and high cheekbones - looks like a rabbit - chews her gum open mouthed with her rabbity buck teeth.

Keep that in mind, worthless human.

Some pleasant changes:

To get to the Old Job I either take the 49 from 15th and Mission up to Sutter, or I take the 14 and transfer at S. Van Ness to a bus up to Sutter, or I walk down Valencia to Market to Van Ness and hop a bus. To get home I walk Van Ness to Market and then to my house. The busses are crowded, often jam-packed standing room only. Full of stinky humanity, bums and junkies, school kids, people going to work. It stinks, it’s noisy, and it’s unpleasant. The bus stops are disgusting, often there is vomit or shit in or near them. The buses are on no discernable schedule, the wait may be long or short. The walk (since I have to avoid the more pleasant Franklin St. thanks to getting mugged there) is down dirty streets, past homeless camps, panhandlers, decaying businesses. Bikes charge at me in crosswalks. It is uphill both ways.

To get to the New Job I check the route schedule for the 37, and then I rush over to the corner of Market and Church and find the bus waiting, or I wait and it arrives right on time. Sometimes I’m the only one on it. Sometimes there are 3 or 4 others. The bus is clean, there are plenty of seats. It winds its way up the hill through mostly charming neighborhoods, there’s a view along the Portola section. It doesn’t smell bad. To get home I can catch that same bus the other way, walk Clipper to 24th to Church and either continue walking or take a bus, or I can walk Portola down to Castro and on to 15th. While it’s crazy uphill on the way there, it’s all down on the return. The streets are mostly clean and lined with charming homes.

At the Old Job I am constantly barraged by perfumes. I gave up complaining after about a year. I was fine until someone came in with one that made me sneeze for 8 hours straight… it seemed to trigger some death gene in my body. I started getting migraines with auras that made me unable to see for 10 minutes. Everyone still wears them, no one is going to stop. Instead they installed two new air vents above my desk area. This is apparently more convenient than not wearing toxic chemicals. The new vents help, but I still get some headaches.

At the New Job the other day I started to smell a strong lily scent. I tried to ignore it, thinking maybe it was coming in through a window, but finally when my sinuses could take it no longer, I asked whether someone had a lily. Turns out, someone had brought a potted one in and put it on the desk when I was out of the room. They kindly moved it into the garage. When I came back the following week, the boss told me that he removed all of the lilies from the bathroom for me!

Turns out, life doesn’t have to suck if you don’t want it to. Keep that in mind.

Recently, I met a woman who was mugged a couple of years ago. Because of it she wouldn't take the bus with me at 10pm, even though the neighborhood she was heading to is pretty nice and fairly populated at night. She said she won't take the bus at night, just cabs. I noticed when someone yelled on the street she seemed a bit flustered. I don't know if I'm older, used to the crappy parts of city living, less prone to PTSD, or what, but I guess one or all of those must be true. While I hope that she (and anyone who has been attacked) will again feel secure in the world, it made me feel good about myself that I have, for the most part, overcome that experience without lasting damage. Sure, I still get overly anxious once in a while when I'm stressed out, but even that continues to fade with time.

So, good job, brain. Thanks for adapting and going with the flow.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
he who can call today his own:
he who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
- Horace

I thought that after I gave notice I would feel light and unencumbered. I had this idea that I would feel a sudden lifting of all anxiety. But, I really just felt the same. As time passes I feel a little more relaxed. I just really want to be able to sleep for a few days and not have to be anywhere... and to live every day as my own day.

My first thought when I saw this guy was to beg the universe not to let him get on the bus I was on. No luck. He was getting on. I moved back and tried to look away. He pushed his way through the crowd with his sign and his meaty bone. It was tied to the right side of his head in the style a flapper might wear a feather. Except instead of a feather, it was a MEATY SINEWY BONE… and it was TIED TO HIS HEAD.

I closed my eyes and held my breath and let him squeeze past behind me. Then I moved the other direction. Everyone near the man with the bone tied to his head pretended they didn’t see the bone and after a group eyebrow raise and revulsion shiver, just ignored him with all of their might. Everyone that was at least half a bus away however, was craning their necks and bugging their eyes at the man with the bone tied to his head.

I got off the bus and took a cab.