Working at the largest and most popular hostel in the middle of a city that thrives on tourism engenders certain perks from people who want our business (and occasionally gifts from happy and/or horny guests as well). Previously I've utilized a free tour to wine country, lots of free chocolate, and $140 in free tickets to a fancy dinner/danceclub place all to excellent effect.

The tour company me and matt book a lot with is called Extranomical adventures and recently they've been extra nice to me and matt for christmas time because we are awesome and give them a ton of business (and in return make good commissions for ourselves along the way).  We book more than anyone else at our hostel, so for christmas they gave me a bottle of champaigne and a ton of chocolate and they gave matt a bottle of red wine and a ton of chocolate (the chocolate has been shared liberally). Even more awesome, they offered us a free taco tour for hotel concierges, and when you are offered a free taco tour, you dont say no.

Matt told me about this extremely hot blond girl from extranomical that invited us on the tour and he was real excited about it, talked about her for days on end, so I let them know we were coming and made a mental note not to hit on the blond girl he liked.  During the night I met a real cute Irish girl from the same booking company who was much more my type than the one matt was hitting on, and by the time we were done we had filled ourselves with free mexican food from 5 different taco joints around town shown us by a mexican tour guide who chose the best items from the best taco joints in the mission, *and* scored a double date with a couple "fine ladies", as matt put it. So where to take a couple european girls new to San Francisco for a night on the town? Naturally, a tranny show!

Our coworker andrew was involved in the "11th annual trannyshack star search competition", sort of an american idol for trannies, and it was hilarious.  I'm not sure if the fact that I was taking a girl on a date cancelled out the overwhelming gayness of going to that event, but it really was a great choice and the girls loved it. Emceeing the event were a couple trannies with enormous hair named Peaches Christ and Heklina, as well as; Sandra O Noshi-Di'int, Princess Kennedy, Fruitbomb, Elijah Minelli, and other punny / supergay names. Each contesatant did some sort of song/dance/choreography thing, usually with a cast of other crazy people, and we saw dance numbers for Janet Jackson, Bowie, Journey (awesome), plays about online dating and miss california and all kinds of partial nudity, violence and weird shit. A good event to drink absinthe to, no less.

AND I got to see my coworker andrew shave his beard, dress up in drag and do a choreographed rendition of the highlights from "Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolfe" with 20 other trannies and "Vivvyanne Forevermoore". Super weird, but it was a pretty hilarious night.

Wow, I'm actually impressed with the democrats.

- The Health care bill going through is flawed, it needs improvement in the future, but damn its a still really good, and it has the Paul Krugman stamp of approval. Its going to reduce our looming enormous deficit by a lot and improve health care while laying the groundwork for the serious business of a public plan once people realize the gov't health care being passed isnt the work of satan.

- All this done at the same time while Obama got china to agree on something- it wasnt really much better than "something"- but something nonetheless, on the subject of climate change. I did expect more from Copenhagen, but ok a start is a start and its the direction we should be moving in. More importantly, cap-and-trade on greenhouse gases looks like its becoming a reality, despite some actual environmentalists bitching about it cause they dont know what they are talking about.

- And we are getting another half a trillion stimulus package to boost job creation- also desperately needed, and something I didnt expect them to have the balls to go through with, thats being pushed sort of stealthily so the republicans are sort of caught off guard.

- AND GITMO detainess are being tried in the usa despite all the nonsense opposition, instead of keeping them in the twilight zone.

I mean, theres been a lot of disillusionment with obama, by progressives and by me personally. He faced a hell of a lot of challenges coming into the presidency and he certainly has made some mistakes, namely on bank bailouts. But... goddamn this is a lot of change, and for the better, on all the major issues I think we desperately need change on. I'm very, very pleasantly suprised. The dems are actually playing hardball, and its working.

My new playlists, after reinstalling windows and reorganizing all my music:

(in alphabetical order)

Beards
Crumpets
Fogey
Hrm
Jangojoop
Mindmeld
Oh Snap
The Axe

Correct guesses for the genre/mood they represent wins a cookie.