Year: 2004

Christmas Butter

Somewhere between 750,000 and 800,000 people live within the city limits of San Francisco. Approximately twenty-six of these residents were born and raised and have roots here. Thus, San Francisco is one of those cities that people leave in droves for the Christmas holiday. one happy result of this trend is that it often makes last minute Christmas shopping relatively painless…

On the other hand, buying groceries can be a rather monumental task, what with the supermarket-to-humans ration here being about a third of what it is anywhere else in the country. I headed to the Safeway about 6:30 and was horrified to find that they were out of butter. Not just out of the butter that was on sale, mind you, nor the butter of the type that I wanted, but completely 100% out. There wasn’t a stick of butter (or, this being California, a cake of butter) in the entire store…

On Collecting and Emperors

Y’know, if it doesn’t involve another design change nor an additional 15 or 20 years of waiting for the damned thing to be built, I’m just as happy as a clam to have the Bay Bridge named in honor of Emperor Norton…

And while I’m still reading today’s paper, I feel compelled again to mention how Tim Goodman just gets it, completely and totally:

But I realized, as I bought a bunch of TV series on DVD that I’d already seen, that it’s not about the watching. It’s about the owning. Rare is the person who says, “I’m going to buy the first season of ‘The Simpsons’ out of curiosity. But not the next four years. And not the 12 to come.” Ours is not that culture. “I really loved the first two seasons of ‘The Sopranos,’ but I wouldn’t dare buy the next three seasons. Oh my, no. Who has the time?”

As consumers, most of us say, “I’ll take all four of these seasons and I’d like to be wait-listed for Season 5 and the yet-to-be-shot Season 6. Here’s my Visa with Uncle Junior and Bacala on the front.”

Americans are collectors. And worse, completists. Count me among you.

Me too…