Hmmm...

Why does Pastor Becky Fischer from Jesus Camp look like a huge honkin' dyke?

Happy cows come from California?

I hate the "Happy cows come from California" ad campaign. Every time I see those mother f-ing commercials on TV, all I can think about is Cowschwitz, the huge factory farm that Discipulus Legis and I drive by on our way to and from San Francisco and Los Angeles. Um, yeah, those cows look really happy to be standing around in their own filth with not a single blade of grass to be seen for miles.

This is Cowschwitz from above:



Let's zoom in for a closer look. Each of those whitish dots is one of those "happy" California cows, thousands of them packed into 100 square miles of factory farm:



Then there's Discipulus Legis's picture that she took of what it looks like on the ground:



I guess if you like things that are wretched and miserable and covered in feces, "happy California cows" are for you.

Hillary for President

I've been having a hard time putting into words what has made me so sick to my stomach about the rush to support Barack Obama, especially in the wake of the Iowa primary. But, an op-ed in the New York Times today captured my thoughts perfectly:

"But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex."

Thank you, Gloria Steinem, for putting my finger on what's been making me so angry about Obama supporters.

Politics, especially presidential elections, are a life-sucking topic, so I will blog about it no more, but I will make this prediction: if Obama is the Democratic nominee, a Republican will be elected president in November. Progressives rely on voters who don't end up voting (remember how well going after the minority and youth votes worked for Kerry?) and overestimate the general electorate's tolerance on any number of issues, especially their tolerance of a black guy whose middle name is Hussein.

Questionable advertising

There's an ad on TV right now, I think from Burlington Coat Factory, where a woman asks a little girl, "Do you believe in Santa?" The little girl replies: "I believe in cashmere."

I think one could safely argue that this little girl should be killed, seeing as how her soul is already dead.

Deutsche Grammophon is chapping my hide

So Discipulus Legis tells me all about this new online music store that Deutsche Grammophon is unveiling today. Of course, I was quite excited--especially since the tracks have a 320 kb/second bit rate, which is more than twice as much as the standard bit rate--so as soon as I came home from work I got on the Internets and went straight for the DG Web Shop. Naturally, I went straight for the Magdalena Kozena albums and lo and behold, there was her new Handel album, a disc that isn't even available at iTunes yet. Seeing as how I don't want to be greedy, I selected one track, placed it in my cart, registered, entered in my credit card information, and pressed "BUY." This is what I got:



This sucks.

This is why crime is so high in SF

This photo was taken at the corner of Fulton and Divisadero at about 3:00 p.m. this afternoon. This is San Francisco Police Department car #274 parked in the red zone in front of a fire hydrant. Note that there is no SFPD officer in the car, nor are the car's flashers or hazard lights on, nor was there any crime nearby. However, Eddie's Cafe--purveyors of coffee and pastries--is located at that corner. Thanks, SFPD, for doing your job so well.

Christine Quinn is a walking rat, sans wings

New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn recently called pigeons "rats with wings." A spokesperson for a group called the Urban Wildlife Coalition said that was equivalent to calling pigeons an "epithet . . . much like the n-word."

No, it's not like using the "n-word," but Quinn is f-ing stupid for saying it anyway.

My love for pigeons is a given, so I won't even get into that. But why do people have such hatred for animals that are really, really successful at thriving in awful conditions? Once, while waiting on the subway platform at 34th street in New York City, I saw a big fat momma rat, a big fat daddy rat, and three little baby rats scurry across the platform and into the subway tunnel. If you're a rat, and you can get plump and raise three bebehs all the while dodging trains, avoiding the third rail, and managing to find food that isn't poisonous, then more power to you. Same with mice and cockroaches. I've lived in apartments with vermin, and while I can't say I enjoyed it, I wouldn't fault the little creatures for being what they are and doing what they do best.

In the mean time, I hope someone coats Christine Quinn in honey, rolls her in birdseed, and throws her to the pigeons in Central Park.

Another thing I don't get about straight women

If anyone out there can explain this mystery to me, please leave a comment:

Why do straight women who have female friends insist on referring to those female friends as "girlfriends"? For example, straight women often say things like this:

Straight woman: "My girlfriend and I like to go shopping together."

Why doesn't she just say, "My friend and I like to go shopping together"?

I like to go shopping with my girlfriend too, but for entirely different reasons, believe you me.

Los Angeles is burning

This makes me glad that we don't live in Los Angeles anymore.

Hearing that Orlando Bloom crashed his car on the corner of where we used to live in LA made me kinda sad that we moved (Discipulus Legis provides the details).



But not that sad.

Shiny happy kittehs

I was just reading news.yahoo.com and saw a headline that said that 5,000 birds have been seized in the nation's largest cockfighting bust. The headline's rollover picture was horrible (a chicken, with almost all of its feathers gone, looking bloodied). I couldn't even read the story. Cockfighting is absolutely awful and anyone who likes it is an f-ing idiot. To distract ourselves from thoughts of horrific animal abuse, let's look at this:



Ah, that's better.

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles!

Look what I found outside of our apartment last night!



It's a 10 lb. (?) bowling ball featuring the image of women's wrestling legend Chyna. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, but I feel it has come into my life for some reason. I must find that purpose. Oh yes.

Worst MUNI line ever

It seems that everyone in SF claims that their MUNI line is the worst, but MUNI line #5 MUST be the worst in the whole city. I see evidence of this every single day. Like today, when I ended up walking with Discipulus Legis to school because there were already 20 people waiting at the #5 stop right outside our building and there was no way she was ever going to get a seat on the next bus, or probably the one after that (and as it turns out, she wouldn't have been able to sit on the next THREE buses that passed by because they were all so full).

Or like last week, when I waited near City Hall for forty minutes for a #5, but then got so fed up that I walked the MILE back to our place and wasn't passed by a SINGLE bus. But what did I see on the opposite side of the street? THREE MUNI #5 BUSES stacked on top of each other. Yes, that's a very efficient way to service the SF citizens who must rely on the MUNI #5.

This city needs a Republican mayor. Stat.

More crime in our neighborhood

The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that there was a rash of shootings and stabbings in SF this weekend, and one shooting was near the gay Safeway where Discipulus Legis and I prefer to do our grocery shopping. This city is WAY too tolerant of crime; it coddles the people who are likely to commit it and does nothing to prevent the conditions that cause it. What exactly does the SFPD do to earn their paychecks? Why doesn't city government do anything about it either? Oh yeah, because the people who run this city are a bunch of bleeding-heart, liberal do-nothings. The Summer of Love ended more than three decades ago. It's time that the city grew up and started tackling some of its problems.

Why is it so hard to complain in SF?

Today I accompanied Discipulus Legis on a trip to her school on MUNI Bus #5. The driver pulled over a few feet from the stop, let everyone off, and sped away, completely blowing by an older woman in a wheelchair waiting at the stop. Yes, the woman looked a little homeless-y, but if she had proper fare, she should be let on like anyone else, especially because the bus was almost empty and there was ample room for a wheelchair.

I thought what the bus driver did pretty much sucked, so I took note of the bus number and surfed over to the SF MUNI web site when I got home to look for the complaint line. Well, there is no complaint line. You have to call 311, which you can't call if you have cell service with T-Mobile. And besides, does anyone really believe that 311 operators are dutifully reporting MUNI complaints to the MUNI personnel office? Yeah, right.

Today's event followed an incident two weeks ago where a DeSoto cab driver tried to claim that he didn't have $8 in change after Discipulus Legis and I tried to pay for a cab ride from Union Square to our place with a $20 bill. Again, I took down the number and visited sfgov.org looking for the taxi complaint line. Again, there was none.

Why is it so hard to complain properly in this city? In NYC, if a cab driver is being a jerk, it has the driver's name, the cab ID number, and the 800 number to call for complaints right there, clearly visible in the back seat.

Anyway, to the driver of MUNI bus #5624 this morning at 10:17 a.m., I hope you find yourself disabled and waiting for the bus, and I hope MUNI drivers pass you by and leave you stranded. Payback's a bitch, isn't it?

Coming of age in the city, Part II: The medical examiner

Following quick on the heels of the drive-by shooting from a few days ago, this evening I saw a City of San Francisco medical examiner van pull away from the apartment building next door. Earlier this evening, as Discipulus Legis and I were returning from dinner, we saw a police car with flashing lights parked near the corner. Later, we saw a fire truck pull up and paramedic-type individuals with medical gear milling about. They didn't seem to be in a big hurry though, and I thought it was strange there was no ambulance. I guess the medical examiner van explains all that. Another interesting day at the corner of Fulton and Steiner in SF.

Daytime TV rots your brain

Seeing as how I am currently unemployed, I have the opportunity to watch a lot of daytime TV. Maury (trashy, yet not fake like Jerry) is my favorite secret guilty pleasure, followed by Montel (trashy, but with a veneer of respectability--except when Sylvia Browne is on), then the divorce court shows, and then the small claims court shows (not trashy enough with too much fake outrage from the "judges").

Anyway, the longer I go without working the more I find myself being drawn into the "career college" commercials they play continuously throughout the day. Maybe I would make a pretty darn good mechanic. Become a massage therapist? Hey, why not. It seems lucrative. Dental assisting? Seems more rewarding than being a freelance writer (which is like pulling teeth, but like pulling your own teeth... without Novacaine). What I truly wonder is if it's really as easy as the commercials make it out to be. Do these places really have lifetime job placement assistance? If they do, does it work? And, more importantly, why does "career services" at NYU's journalism department seem to consist of a few crappy web pages with broken links?

Coming of age in the city: My first drive-by

At about 9:40 yesterday morning there was a drive-by shooting almost directly in front of my apartment building. I heard two very loud pops (gunshots don't sound like they do in the movies) and rushed to my open window to see what the heck was going on. There was some shouting followed by more shots in very quick succession. The San Francisco Chronicle's reporting on the incident seems pretty inaccurate. The victim that was shot did not run down Steiner to Grove Street. He was dropped right on the corner of Fulton and Steiner, as the fuzzy picture I took with my cell phone camera shows. The ambulance is on the corner, and the crowd that's gathered there is watching the paramedics put the guy on a board and put him in the ambulance.



For some reason, the focus of the SF Chronicle article is on SF Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and how he supposedly swooped in from Grove Street and helped apprehend the suspects. (A post over at SFist.com goes ga-ga for this Mirkarimi-as-hero thing too). The claim seems pretty random to me, again since the incident did NOT occur on Grove Street. There were numerous people standing on the corner of Fulton and Steiner, including the people going in and out of Alamo Square Park (there are stairs leading up to the park on that corner), and plenty of witnesses who had a much better view than Mirkarimi (if he was jogging on Grove as claimed). Those people, who were truly in the crossfire zone and got a good look at everything that went on, are the true heroes of the story.

Anyway, it was a scary incident, and in all my years of urban living in a few different major cities, I've never experienced anything like it. The SFPD should have uniformed officers ALL OVER the streets in the Western Addition/Tenderloin areas. Say what you will about Giuliani, but his "broken windows" theory of policing works.

Here are more pictures:


Police cars on Fulton Street.


Always nice to see "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS" on your sidewalk.


Cops process the suspects' vehicle on Fulton.


Cops on Fulton. I wonder if there are an equal number of cops on Grove Street... where nothing happened.


Cops rope off Fulton at Steiner.

A picture is worth a thousand open houses

Discipulus Legis and I were in San Francisco two weeks ago looking for an apartment. The picture below, taken at the hotel we stayed at, is a visual metaphor for our search.


We found a place, but I would like to make an obscene gesture to the landlords, collectively, of San Francisco, California.

People's Republic of Chicken Killers

China is a messed up country for many reasons -- suppressing democracy, poisoning food supplies, numerous human rights violations -- but for me this just underlines the f-ed up mentality that is at work over there.

A zoo spokesman told People's Daily: "We wanted to bring out the savage nature of the tigers while they were still cubs."

Um, to what end? An adorable bloodbath?

Please, China, refrain from putting baby chickens in tiger cages and maybe allow an election or two while you're at it. Thanks.