I hate to encourage the "authorities" to harrass street people, but Rob Morse does have a point.

I've never seen a city where public spaces and expensive residential neighborhood (not just alleys) smelled so strongly of urine.
7/27/2001 12:18:43 PM

Walking under the highway this morning near Valencia and Market, I ran into DPW clearing the charred remains of a tent/paper ridden homeless encampment. Yesterday there were 4 or 5 people living there.

I hope they escaped without injury. (I was going to say that I hoped they were okay, but they weren't okay to begin with.)
7/27/2001 11:50:25 AM

Wednesday, July 25, 2001

It's always encouraging when your district supervisor can't refrain from throwing temper tantrums in public...
7/25/2001 04:16:45 PM

Thursday, July 19, 2001

It seems that President Bush (*twitch*) has caused another international incident...although I have to admit this one isn't really his fault.

stolen from Ziad, who posted it to a listserv i read
7/19/2001 02:46:39 PM

If material here has seemed thinner than usual, there are two reasons for that: I've been having trouble concentrating, and when that happens my consumption of links goes way down, and there hasn't been as much to write about and I've displaced a bunch of chatter to a livejournal that I set up primarily to be able to make posts to other people's journals without being anonymous.

So I haven't been eaten by dragons or anything. . .
7/19/2001 08:21:44 AM

Friday, July 13, 2001

So apparently my work at national archives lives on. Look at page 10 of this electronic records documentation.
7/13/2001 02:27:13 PM

Anyone who flies pass yahoo's headlines daily will have seen this, but The Taliban has outlawed the Internet.

evil, evil, evil.
7/13/2001 01:50:43 PM

Thursday, July 12, 2001

I've been peripherally watching discussions on metafilter and livejournal about a webcam girl in New York's livejournal televised suicide attempt this week. I haven't watched it all because I'd prefer to avoid direct contact with the drama, but I'm bothered by the reactions I've seen on metafilter and elsewhere. Metafilter reactions seem to be divided roughly into two groups: those saying that they 'feel her pain' and refusing to criticize her, and those complaining that her suicide attempt was a manipulative, cheap attempt to get attention. Others have criticized the stupidity of telling the world that you are going to off yourself on an online journal.

Well, I suppose the act was stupid, but to my way of thinking all suicide is stupid and manipulative. People often do stupid things when they are in pain.

But it leads me to wonder...why should Stacey be criticized any more than anyone who tries to kill themselves? A significant number of suicide attempts are cries for attention, and the scope and artistic quality of the cry doesn't change the substance of it, does it?

The rest of those suicides genuinely intend to end it all, and if that's what you're doing, HOW you do it is really meaningless to the rest of us. It's the net effect that matters.

I guess it seems to me that everyone would be saying "how tragic" if she'd unplugged all her cams then quietly killed herself without warning anyone. It's as if her suicide attempt is being criticized because it wasn't "genuine" enough, and she wasn't chic enough in the attempt. As for me, I can't find enough virtue in a "real" "authentic" suicide attempt to judge Stacey's public online attempt as inferior. I think it would be better not to judge her act by aesthetic standards, and honestly I prefer her "crass" attempt because it gave people a chance to try to save her. On the whole, I'd prefer that she were selfish and alive then selfish and dead. I don't know whether I'm making any sense here....
7/12/2001 06:14:49 PM

James and I just had the most horrendous experience (his brawn and my helpless bleating).

We made what we thought would be a quick stop by the Sumner Street apartment to remove a bookshelf, a gold cabinet and a sofa, so that all we would have to do on Saturday was quickly clean up and remove a couple of things.

Everything went smoothly until we tried the sofa, which managed, in Dirk Gently style, to lodge itself firmly in the doorway, with both of us on one side of it, and James hauling and shoving it to no avail for . . .at least an hour.

While we were trying to get it out of the front door, who should show up but our landlord -- who had scheduled about 4 appointments to see the apartment. He stared at us in bewilderment while he lost two prospective tenants, then finally let another in through the bottom flat, up the stairs, and in the back door.

I stood and made helpless, apologetic and ironic comments as if imprisoned in a british television comedy. ("We really thought you'd be showing the apartment tonight," "As you can see, we're having a bit of a problem with this," "It's really a nice apartment on the other side of this sofa.")

Finally, we asked an older gay couple from across the street whether they had a saw, and proceeded with one of them assisting to cut through most of the supporting struts on the sofa until it would bend enough to get through the gate.

Thanked them profusely. Got the hell out of there.

Sadly, we'll still have to go back to finish the damned apartment on Saturday.
7/12/2001 03:31:04 PM

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

Hah. Apparently REPUBLICANS have more nightmares than Democrats. (of course this study was done at Berkeley, so that might somehow discount the results...) stolen from a link in the middle of an argument on metafilter
7/11/2001 04:33:24 PM

Monday, July 09, 2001

So go and read rebeccablood.net. I've been transfixed by her links for a good hour today, and I'm really, really supposed to be working.
7/9/2001 02:11:35 PM

Webvan apparently folded this weekend, which - since I'm in San Francisco, and could have used them, sucks.

Of course, they've been delivering groceries for over two years and I never managed to order anything from them, as I had the impression that they would cost too much money, and I have trouble buying produce without seeing it first.

On the other hand, yesterday I had the pleasure of dragging myself to the local Safeway to spend $49 (!) on two bags of groceries, despite buying no meat except bacon on sale. For this pleasure I got to discard the idea of buying peaches on sale because they were literally rotting on the shelves and to listen to an increasingly hysterical cashier paging the management for a price check for 20 minutes straight.

Some deal, hm?

[yes, we are reduced to talking about the inanities of daily shopping. sorry.]
7/9/2001 09:08:05 AM

Sunday, July 08, 2001

So I'm posting by dialup at 7:00 am Sunday morning from a computer set up on an endtable in the living room of James' and my new apartment. The living room is wall to wall boxes, but the kitchen is at least workable. We'll have to rearrange as we figure out where things have to be to make everything workable, and poor james has to wash all the dishes (I can't, as dishwashing, like moving boxes, reduces my hands to cracking, red, peeling masses of flesh, as do rubber gloves) but stuff is put away. I am a little dismayed, as always, by how many clothes I own, and by the fact that Victorian era apartments - however charming - never have enough closet space for me.. James is out cold, naturally, and I really don't know why I'm awake.
7/8/2001 07:21:47 AM

Friday, July 06, 2001

His cat hates you. via metafilter

7/6/2001 07:35:52 AM

Tuesday, July 03, 2001

So I'm finally reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods, after 3 or 4 months of curiousity (spurred on regularly by Neil's online journal), in which incarnations of Old World gods battle the new American gods of Television, Credit Cards and Shoppping Malls in the Mid-West. I love urban fanstasy, and I love this, but I'm not finding it as engrossing as similar stories by Tim Powers or Sean Stewart, and I'm not sure why.

Perhaps it is just because I prefer to read Mr. Gaiman with accompanying visual input, like his graphic novels - or perhaps I'm just having trouble concentrating while in the middle of packing up my house.
7/3/2001 08:10:15 AM