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This has been a good weekend, full of unexpected social delights and fatty foods.

I have had totally heterosexual man-dates two nights in a row. Friday, burntcurtis took me for Chinese (and I hardly look it) at China Palace, where I ate round-eye delights like orange spicy chicken. Great conversation with him in a romantic booth. Last night threepunchstuff spirited me off to a G(r)eek restaurant where we ate flaming cheese, etc. Thanks to both of you for being wonderfuli and totally heterosexual man-friends!

I also got to see all sorts of people I never see, and purely by chance, including the reclusive handstil and godforesaken who are rarely observed since their natural habitat is fifty feet underground.

And! Other people had sent me books recently so I read a pile of them, including two graphic novels about hellholes. Guy Delisle's Pyongyang details his time in North Korea working on animation projects, and Ted Rall's half-graphic Silk Road To Ruin is a combination "comic book" about his travels there and history/backgrounder on Central Asia. Both good. Rall's is particularly useful and full of the sort of black humor that only places like Turkmenistan provide.

I'm enjoying the Halloween season this year for the first time in forever. I managed to recapture that childhood sensation of anticipation about costumes and haunted houses and candy skulls. I was never big into candy, although acquisition itself was a huge high on the actual night, but I loved the way neighbors did up their houses into "scary" haunts. People around here really get into that, and there are some dark and creepy strobed-out houses with hands reaching out the windows, etc. already. I like that way better than the adult beer-bash version.

Speaking of which, the costumes for kids are turning me into Old Conservative Guy. Nick and Nicole found a set of wrist-and-ankle bondage cuffs in the Halloween store, complete with unambiguous drawing of bound hussy, that included the instruction they were not for children under six. Meanwhile, a young teenager was being urged into a Slutty Nurse Outfit by her mother, as Junior complained "Mom, they won't allow this at school!" No.

The Santa Ana winds make my eyes and throat dry and are kind of a pain in the ass, but it's so BEAUTIFUL here right now with that very clear light we never get. I took a load of pics in Santa Ana yesterday and maybe some of of them are salvageable. The "camera out the window at 40 mph" style isn't conducive to great art.

Maybe I'll drive out to the desert tomorrow.