Pacificapocalypse

Married, a month later it’s Thanksgiving, found a house we like (and can afford!) bought said house, packing, moving, and we get the keys on Christmas Eve.

So yeah… it’s been busy.

Going to have to rename the site. Merry Christmas everyone.

And so… the countdown starts. Everything is (fingers crossed) all good to go.

I think.

photo credit: laffy4k

….when you can find parking in the Mission.
Yes, indeed, once again, it’s Burning Man.
Take it away Violet Blue:

While attendees of the yearly arts festival known as Burning Man come from all over the nation and the world, the impact of the costly desert bacchanalia is felt pretty strongly around San Francisco. Many rejoice at the sudden lack of rich hippies and art cars dripping Barbie heads and Legos onto the roads when fog breaks down cheap art-store epoxy, and the ease with which one can get brunch in the Mission. There are virtually no white dudes with dreadlocks for seven square miles. San Francisco smug levels ratchet back to tolerable in the absence of arty hipster trust fund brats and Web 2.0 lets-resurrect-Pets.com-as-a-vlog leeches. Super annoying guys don’t hit on me in bars assuming I know what the hell they’re talking about when they use terms like “the burn,” “the man” and “off the grid.”

And at house parties, there are no chicks that become uncontrollably drunk and then attempt to show you how they can “fire dance,” accidentally setting fire to the host’s potted plant/small dog/infant

From the article, how to enjoy Burning Man and not have to leave the City:

• Before eating any food, drop it in a sandbox and lick a battery.
• Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room. Put on your most fabulous outfit. Turn the fans on full blast. Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.
• Buy a new set of expensive camping gear. Break it.
• Get so drunk you can’t recognize your own house. Walk slowly around the block for five hours.
• Have a 3 a.m. soul-baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you’re hallucinating. Lust after Bugs Bunny.
• Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body. Forget how you did it. Don’t go to a doctor.
• Pay an escort of your affectional preference subset to not bathe for five days, cover themselves in glitter, dust, and sunscreen, wear a skanky neon wig, dance close naked, then say they have a lover back home at the end of the night.

I’ve said it many times, and so I’ll say it again:
I have a perfect Burning Man attendance record: zero.

Shamelessly stolen from Boing Boing.

Carla and I had a nice time at the 2009 San Francisco Zine Fest on Sunday. This week and next, I’m sharing some of the photos I took of the zinesters who came to sell their comics and zines. I’ll post a new photo each day.

This is Doctor Popular, a professional yo-yoist and cartoonist. I bought a couple of “24-hour” comic books from him, which are 24-page comic books that were created in 24 consecutive hours. My favorite is Robots Don’t Know Anything about Twitter. Doc Pop made the comic by tweeting “Robots don’t know anything about…” and used the answers that his friends tweeted back as the panels for the comic. Fun!

I don’t know if he sold out of the print version of Robots Don’t Know Anything about Twitter, as it had a print run of 100 copies (each cover was hand colored!), but he is giving it away as a free PDF. What a swell guy that Doc is.

Handsome mother fucker.

Via Boing Boing

Okay, tragedy averted, everyone relax; I think the most important thing we can take away from this incident is this:

One student, Hongying Markowitz, compared the sound of the explosion to a “gunshot.”

Hongying Markowitz?
Most awesome cross-cultural name ever.

You know that thing where you technically have a weekend, but you pack so much into it, it flys by and you blink and it’s over?
Yeah me too.
Last Friday night was Spamalot at the Golden Gate Theater which was hilarious; I mean come on JOHN O’HURLEY! Dude’s funny and I forgive him for Seinfeld which I loathe. Not a exactly a straight stage production of ‘The Holy Grail‘ but a good mix of the more popular Python skits and I was grateful that they didn’t try to have actors try and portray any of the actual Python cast.  So yeah, if you’re a fan of MP, you should go. Oh and court got some really cool Killer Rabbit slippers.
Ok so that was Friday night, didn’t get back home until midnight, then have to be up at 0600 Saturday morning because….

River Arts Festival!

In Sacramento no less. We picked up Kelé and hustled up to Sac. Set up the table and then I got to play photographer amongst the various homemade… crap. Hey no offense but most of it was garage sale quality. Court hawked her custom hula-hoops and Kelé had a bunch of knit stuff that was pretty cool, and there were one or two other vendors with neat stuff (Roger the depressed carved wooden spoon man being one) but mostly it was just okay.

Court sold I think eight hoops, which is cool (I think her demoing one in the aisle every once in a while really helped sales; that’s called marketing children) and more than paid for the material to make them, so yeah, this whole custom hoop thing may be a viable money maker… especially when a vendor is charging $60.00 for the exact same thing at…

Makers Faire 2009

Which we got up, again, at 0 dark 30 for. Court and Kelé were volunteering at the Bizarre Bazaar so we got there way early, which turned out to be a very good thing ’cause the place filled up quicky and we were able to score a pretty close parking spot. Too many cool things going on to go into in detail; suffice to say that crew from The Crucible were wicked cool as was Cyclecide.
I have a full photoset that I’ll get up later today. The Crucible had their E.R.V (Educational Response Vehicle) on scene; a converted 1960’s firetruck… no seriously, a real firetruck. Like Bradbury’s Firemen from Fahrenheit 451; a truck that shoots fire. Loud as hell; it set off car alarms for Christ’s sakes. So cool.

Hey check it! New baby giraffe at the San Francisco Zoo.

Finally some good news  amongst all the doom and gloom lately. I’m thinking if it’s nice this weekend Court and I will take a day trip to the Zoo and check out his spindly leggedness. I dig giraffes.
One simple request; I like the dude too, but please please please.. don’t name it Obama. ‘Cause that’s just silly.

These were the lazy salad days… warm gentle breezes, crickets chirping in the twilight as Mother and I sipped lemonade on the porch.

Bullshit.

It’s freaking cold out there!
So here we are with another Xmas about to blow it’s festive load all over us. Good times. Unfortunately, my employer has decided that they need to remain open for business (of which there will be none) the day after Xmas, which throws a monkey wrench into the whole visiting the various fams for the holidays road travel extravaganza. Meh, we’ll make it work somehow. So here’s my checklist so far:

• Gifts: all done
• Gifts to wrap: three left to go
• Current mood: suspicious with a hint of ennui
• Currently listening to: Joy Division unreleased Christmas Album bootleg. Ok I made up that last part.

Anyway it’s damn slow in the office and I can tell it’s going to be a very long day.

New Ink!

Finally! Two weekends ago I said screw it and Court and I went and got new ink. Jeff at Lyle Tuttle was able to get us in on a moments notice, so tip o’ the hat to him for that.
I decided to work the chem geek/foodie angle and came up with this -

Don’t waste too much skull sweat trying to figure it out; unless you’re a BioChem freak (or SuperFreak – I’m looking at you Atek) then you might not recognize the chemical diagram for 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide, or more commonly known as capsaicin, the burny goodness in chili peppers.
I’m not going to say what Court got done until i can get a good picture of it, so guess away.

Oh yeah and I asked Court to marry me last Wednesday.
So yeah, it’s been an interesting two weeks.

Ok look, I’m no fan, by any means, of Pat Buchanan, but the man does have a handle on history.
Ignore the messenger ( odious though he may be ) and listen to the message.

Will the Terrorists Succeed Again?

“Terrorism is a tactic, a technique, a weapon that fanatics, dictators and warriors have resorted to through history. If, as Clausewitz wrote, war is the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism is the continuation of war by other means.”

So, will they? I’m not so sure. I do believe he’s correct in his argument that the real target of this attack is Pakistan itself:

But the strategic target of the militants is the Pakistani government.
Pakistan’s offenses? Cooperating with America in Afghanistan and the border region, battling al-Qaida and the Taliban, withdrawing from the fight for Kashmir, seeking peace with a Hindu nation where 170 million Muslims are denied their place in the sun.

I pray ( as I seldom do these days ) that cooler heads prevail and that these ten criminals do not end up in the history books, but instead, as Trotsky said:

“You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on / into the dustbin of history!”

Ok, look, I’m all for activism, social change, inclusiveness and public demonstration, but this is just plain stupid.

From today’s issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian in the Alerts section:

Freeze and chant? It’s like the joke when the robber stick the gun in the victims face and says “Don’t move! Put your hands up!” “So wait, do I not move or do I put my hands up?” And I *despise* flash mobs and their associated nonsense; they’re annoying and no longer the unique occurrence they were once upon a time. That time was a Tuesday afternoon, for about 20 minutes, in late 2002. Just ask this girl if they’re still a good idea.
These guys need to take a clue from Improv Everywhere.
Now they know how to do a public scene.