Screw online personals. You always have to "register" to look at them anyway. I've found a better venue for my indulgence.

Petfinder. Oh the joys. I'm serious. You can search by breed, or location, and for most dogs and cats there's a picture AND a personality description. There are also nuances to naming that you notice after some browsing. Dogs and cats tend to be named very aptly for their look and personality (unlike humans, who in our culture don't have much of looks OR personality when they're named). You can sense when a dog has dashing good looks--names like Casanova, Rhett, Isabelle, Simone. There are common, mediocre names that could go any way--Maggie, Cindy, Max. Dogs named Duke tend to be dignified yet rough around the edges, like Winston Churchill-cum-John Wayne. One of my favorite pictures is Shammy. If there were ever a dog to live up to its name...

It's so much better than personals. I can have my fantasies of cohabitation without feeling lame or pressured, and I can laugh at pictures and personalities without feeling guilty. Dogs and cats. I stayed up an extra hour laughing and gasping and going awwww at all the pictures. Whatever, I'm a schmuck.

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There was a really thick fog last night at about 3am over Alameda and downtown Oakland. I was on my way home from a night of Beyond Balderdash when I noticed it thickening around me. The visibility slowly lessened as I got closer to home. 2 blocks... 1 block... half a block. Fog, along with clear warm nights and cool spring days, is one of my favorite weather conditions to be in. It doesn't happen too often, when a fog is thick enough to muffle sounds, to scent the air, to make breathing difficult. Where you'd lose a person if they walked too far away from you. Every kind of light takes on a shape--the yellow cones cast by street lamps, the white arms of my headlights reaching forward. I decided to keep driving to the beach, not too far from my house. As expected, it got even thicker, till I couldn't see but 15, 20 feet ahead of me. After passing about five pieces of roadkill, I slowed my car to a crawl. Finally I parked and started walking the sidewalk that stretches along the beach. I could hear the sound of the sand crunching under my feet, loud and clear, because there wasn't much else to hear. Lonely bird calls echoed against the houses now and then. As I walked further from my car, I realized that not only was this fog mysterious and beautifully thick, it could also be dangerous. There are otherworldly fogs, there are enchanting and romantic fogs, but there are also ghost fogs and killing fogs. Fogs that people are rightly afraid to enter. As I turned around to head back to my car, I could have sworn I heard a woman cough and mutter something from a distance behind me. I had a funny thought--"Who would be out this late on this road on a night like this?" Well, me, for one. But I didn't feel like investigating. It was a strange fog, a little too thick in which to find friends. I kept thinking about the roadkill I passed, stretched across the road, ribcage exposed. My steps were small and even, so even that I would have instantly recognized anything that was not of that pattern. Bird calls, none of them singing. Finally, my car was in front of me. Finally, I got in my car. As I rode slowly home, I wondered if I had led something to my car and let it in. Some sort of vampire, perhaps, or some lonely animal's ghost. Maybe just fear.

10:48 a.m. 2003-12-03�