Maybe this should be the first entry at The Silliest Place on Earth™, but I’m not up and running with that site yet:

In San Francisco, the maximum legal time limit for parking on an otherwise unmarked street is 72 hours. However, “special event” signs, which warn that you may be towed if you don’t move your car by a certain time, need only be posted 24 hours in advance. Does this sound like a bit of a contradiction? You’re allowed to park for 72 hours. Except when you aren’t allowed to. And you only get 24 hours notice that you’re not allowed to…

In other words, your legally-parked car can be legally towed, and you get the privilege of paying a couple hundred bucks for the whole experience just because you parked legally on a street in San Francisco…

I’d offer some citations, but — of course — the website which houses the city’s traffic code doesn’t work. Rather like the whole city government…

I hate this city…

Yesterday on Mark‘s birthday, I joked that it was almost time for his spanking, and he had no idea what I was talking about. He was completely unfamiliar with the concept of kids getting one playful birthday whack on the butt for every year followed by “one to grow on”…

Now I’m wondering if it’s a generational of geographic gap. Was this a Southern tradition or just an old one that has since — mercifully, perhaps — gone away?

A note to certain of my co-workers: if working for a large corporation so offends your sense of ethics that it becomes the only thing you can talk about — or think about — all day, do you maybe need to ask yourself at some point why you continue to accept that tainted paycheck every week instead of just moving along and doing something else?

It’s just a thought…

Yes, like many San Francisco residents, I work with a number of annoying anarchists. Actually, they’d probably be more inclined to refer to themselves as “individualists” or “non-conformists”. Evidently, individualism is defined by a need to recite recycled dogma on an hourly basis and to have as many tattoos and vaguely repulsive piercings as possible, while non-conformity means ignoring rules just because they’re rules and questioning all authority just because it’s authority.

Mind you, despite this focus on the individual, there is a community focus too. It usually seems to involves parking one’s obligatory, non-polluting, non-conformist bicycle in a narrow passageway INSIDE the office so as to make it more visible to the less-evolved (who take the bus), not to mention to create as much of a safety hazard as possible to anyone who might damage himself on its protruding handlebars. Like me. At least once a week…

I keep reminding myself that they’re young, idealistic poseurs who will eventually grow up and get slightly less annoying. But they probably won’t, particularly here in the insulating womb of San Francisco, where non-conformity is a fashion statement and individuality is rewarded (tolerated) only when it poses no threat to — nor asks any questions of — “the community”…

Happy birthday to the most wonderful boy in the world. I love you, baby…