San Francisco Open Your Golden Gate-part2

The Roadway of Death and Other Driving Hazards


Most books claiming to be the best travel guide are high on concept and low on reality. Getting around San Francisco for example, you need to know how to deal with public transportation, what parts of town to avoid and where to score some good pot. If you are like most people who insist on driving here are some handy tips.

Drive defensively- I mean like Jason Bourne being chased by cops and KGB in Moscow defensive. This means stomping alternately on the gas and brakes- especially when on a steep hill and the traffic light changes. Three words here: master the clutch.

Think small- Anything bigger than a Honda civic is unmanageable. Don't believe it? Practice driving down a one way alley with cars parked on both sides and parallel park in a space roughly the size of a bathtub.

Think Indy 500 while on any major freeway. Don’t expect to be going the posted speed limit that is merely there as a “suggestion”. I was treated to the white knuckle experience of traveling 85 miles -in the slow lane - on the hiway of death while the crazy brother chatted merrily on his cell phone. I did mention I hate cell phones.

The Pedestrian is God .When you see a pedestrian step off the curb that is the signal to stop and you are not allowed to go until they are on the opposite sidewalk. Don’t worry the crosswalk sign counts down how long the poor, slow two legged creature has to get their ass across while the drivers are poised to stomp on the gas at the first opportunity. No pressure.

Remember it’s not just driving it’s an experience in terror and wear your seat belt.

San Francisco Open Your Golden Gate-part 1

A Vacation was in order. I got my ticket, packed my bag and was off to SF by train. I crashed at an old friends place with one of the best views ever. The company was good, the couch I slept on was comfortable and best of all the food was fantastic. Forget the sight seeing, I’m there for the food.

I met up with my brother and SB and MP for lunch- all the names have been changed to protect the innocent and avoid embarrassment. SB looked exactly the same and MP was as lovably eccentric as ever. Strange how we get older but time stands still with our memories. I damn near collapsed from fatigue as we went for a walk in the park nearby. I forgot that I barely slept on the train. An afternoon nap took care of that.

I had a couple of places I had to visit on the trip and one of them was the Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park, which I glimpsed on the walk after lunch. The Steinhart Aquarium and the De Young Museum across the concourse had been damaged years before in the big earthquake and were completely rebuilt. It was my favorite haunt when I lived there and missed it the last time I visited because of construction. I would not miss this time and planned to spend the whole day there checking out the new exhibits and seeing a planetarium show. Alas events conspired against me.

First I was hit in the head with a frying pan by the world famous artist mother of my hostess. “Oh I’m sorry I thought you were someone else.” she said innocently. Damn these paranoid artists. No that’s not what happened, actually I slipped and hit my head on a metal chair but being blind sided by an old lady sounds more dramatic. The head injury was minor and quickly attended to but the fall wrenched my already sore back.

By the time I made my pilgrimage to the park the back injury made walking painful and I was so stressed I had cut the visit short. No planetarium, no Japanese Garden. I already felt crappy with a persistent couch that wouldn’t go away and this really made me miserable. Once I rested a bit my back was fine the rest of the trip.

A party was planned to welcome the return of the prodigal daughter of the hostess who had been out of the country ( the daughter, not the hostess- I hate dangling participles don’t you?). We went on a shopping spree and got lots of goodies. My big bother- I mean brother- made seafood pasta and I was in charge of sausage marinara.

We also went to an ice cream shop with the oddest flavors I have ever tasted. Peanut butter curry, chili lime, bourbon and corn flakes and the oddest government cheese. They were out of the ham ice cream big brother was looking for. The flavors were a big hit at dessert.

Out the Door

"Everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it." Huck Finn

I know what he's talking about. You live your life working, running errands. taking care of the kids, doing what it is you do and eventually it wears you down until you need to get away from yourself and responsibilities. For me it is vital, vital I tell you, to keep my creativity active with inspiration which has been lacking. Prisoners and animal go nuts when kept in solitary confinement, their minds bouncing off the blank walls like random ping pong balls. That's me so I scraped enough green together, said the hell with it and I'm off to SF for some serious R&R.

San Francisco is a great city and I'm glad I lived there despite lingering emotional baggage. It's far enough away from home but close enough to access by train. I'd live there if I could afford it and didn't mind the specter of earthquakes .But I can' and I do. The next best thing is to visit it every once in a while to cleanse the gunk from my mind and breath fresh ocean air. The pollen in the Willamette Valley can lay low even the mightiest.

I'm out the door and out of my mind. I'll tell you all about it campers when I get back.

Mondays random ideas

Let's start the week with some ideas to mull over. I spend a lot of time thinking deep thoughts and you can too.

First, I am surprised there aren't more mystery marijuana plants growing around and I think we need more of them as a subtle form of protest.

Would be terrorists are now would be candidates for the Darwin Awards. You know, people who have removed themselves from the gene pool by their own stupidity. Should we be frightened of these morons or amused?

It's official, no one listens to the lessons of history. As soon as I heard about the Israelis horribly botched raid on a flotilla running a blockade, I was reminded of an strikingly similar event in Mideast history. So what are the chances that Israel will be impartial investigating it's own raid?

I have wondered about the problem of low voter turn out, corrupt campaigns and influence peddling in politics for years. Here's a idea whose time has finally come. Make everyone vote -You want to live in a democracy than do your duty.

Just a couple of ideas to get the little gray cells working- as Poirot calls the brain. Discuss.

Facebook is Evil, but you Knew That

The big fat social network’s privacy policy is non existent, it’s a joke. Don’t believe me? Even another giant corporation like Newsweek says so.

"If you really expect this company to suddenly become trustworthy, you’ve lost your mind. Over the past five years Facebook has repeatedly changed its privacy policy, always in one direction, and every time this happens, the same movie plays out. People complain. Facebook stonewalls, then spins, then pretends to be contrite, then finally walks things back—but only a little."

Uber Geek Wil Wheton knows this too.

". . . I think that Facebook is evil, guys. I believe that Facebook is making gazillions of dollars by exploiting its users, and Facebook doesn't give a shit about how its users feel about that. The only reason Facebook has made any changes to their laughable privacy policies recently is because the company was looking at legal action, and was in danger of losing money."

Which is a major bummer for me because right now it’s the only way I keep in touch with family and (real) friends not close by. But I have to use it until something better comes along and something better come along, There are ways to get control of privacy if you’re careful and computer savvy.

There has never been any real privacy on the net- remember it was developed by the military, the nosy bastards. I tell anyone who thinks otherwise to treat it like a public forum. Anything you write, say, link etc. is like sending a postcard-anyone can see it. Don’t say anything on the net you wouldn’t say out loud in a public place.

The difference between gay marriage and straight marriage

This is all over the internet and demonstrates that strong view points can be made with humor and inventiveness. Oh yeah, and we should force gays to marry so they can be as miserable as the rest.

Ghosts in the machine

I woke up at 10 am this morning, it was my day off from excerise while my left knee and ankle rested from the new strain of walking for a mile at a stretch. I was enjoying the feeling of idle sloth when I realized I had to get up and make a train reservation.

Fate was unkind by teasing me with a lower fare that magically disappeared when I called for a reservation. Noooooo! I swore at the cursed bad timing that plagues my life. I never seem to be in the right place at the right time. I talked to a guy named Michael who was so remote I might have done better with "Julie" a computerized representative so popular with corporations too cheap to hire more out sourced workers. She a cheerful voice that talks to you like you're an idiot and instantly makes my blood boil. Whoever came up with this idea ( and the automated phone tree) is seriously misanthropic.

Some people like "Julie", one Amtrak employee told me how he likes to flirt with her using explicit language that is beyond the comprehension of her tiny computer vocabulary. She doesn't get sarcasm either I've discovered. I know Julie is meant to remove the human factor in corporate transactions but I have her number -it's zero, punch that and you are transferred to a real person like the humorless Michael. Oh well.

That business out of the way I biked to the library where I do volunteer work in tech services. I made progress purging old, redundant copies of Danielle Steele and Tom Wolfe from the catalog. I felt like a censor in a communist regime. Here in the oppressive country of Eugenia we do not abide trashy novels. I gleefully blacked out bar codes and stamped "removed from library" on the first pages. I went home quite satisfied.

The first Thursday of the month is Instructor's class in aikido. It's kinda neat and intimidating to train with other black belts for a change. Neat cause I 'm playing with the big kids now and intimidating cause I have to be on top of my game and do the whole "extend ki" thing right rather than just act like I know what I'm doing with the lower ranked students. It's hard to explain but I am still amazed I can do this stuff. The instructor did some advanced testing and I didn't mentally flinch as he directed a wave of ki at me, meant to disturb my mind. I remained calm and focused much to my surprise.

Now if I can just do that while dealing with the likes of "Julie" . . .

Let's get along -or else.

“Come on people now,
smile on your brother
everybody get together
try to love one another right now.” -The Youngbloods

There is a lot of nasty bickering going on in the world. In fact, I think we’ve reached the saturation point. Pakistan hates India and vice versa. Israelis want to obliterate the Palestinians and anyone who wants to help them. Iran is busy torturing and oppressing it’s own population because they had the gall to protest rigged election results. Christians are competing amongst themselves for Tight Ass of the Year Award when it comes to the social issue du jour. The Catholic Church continues the hypocrisy of vilifying homosexuality while engaging in the cover up of institutional pedophilia. Meanwhile conservative Muslims treat women like door mats then get pissed at anyone for calling them misogynists. I think we can safely say we have insufferable, arrogant behavior down pat.

Hey here’s an idea. Let’s have a contest to see who can be the most tolerant. Tolerance doesn’t mean you have to like or agree with someone, it means you have to allow the opinion that they have as much right to exist as you do. There are two important criteria here - does the actions of others directly affect you and are they inflicting harm on anyone? The pagans have one commandment: do what you will, harm none. That’s good place to start.

All these folk talk about how loving, forgiving and compassionate their God is- and by extension it’s adherents, so it’s see the proof. It’s easy to be considerate of those who believe as you do BUT who can show the most compassion to people who aren’t like them. Which group can come closest in practice with what the Big Guy asks.

The Red Cross is already ahead by providing first aid training to the Taliban. Anger ensues, “but they are bad so they shouldn’t get help”, the critics complain. Doctors without Borders are frequently threatened for the same reason. In this contest people are people period. You can’t take sides and decide who’s right or wrong. Claiming that you and your God are better than someone else and their God, is easier said than done. Prove it or shut up.

We're Walking, we're walking

So I was telling a friend of mine at a food laden party that I needed too walk more but I'm not good at self motivation. She had the solution to that. She needed a walking buddy too so she insists she will call me 3 times a week and cajole me into exercising.

Now, it doesn't actually take much to prod me, so this is a good thing-I think- but of course I have to make sure this latest attempt to reduce my widening girth last more than a week. Each week I have to walk a little further. There's another variation of this, where you increase the time by a minute each day. I like to have a destination in mind because a mindless walk is just a waste of time if you ask me, or maybe it's my tendency to multi-task. I vary the route so I don't get bored. I can go to the store 3 blocks away to get a newspaper (not a coke). I can walk to the dojo (one kilometer round trip) instead of biking. Anywhere my short fat legs can carry me.

Getting out of shape is so much easier than getting back into shape. Sigh.