Vehicles That Taste Good

Y’know, for my money, nothing says “style”, “elegance”, “sophistication”, “class”, and just plain old “good taste” quite like a big honkin’ SUV limo…

San Francisco 100, Me 0

So this past weekend, after several years of fights and struggles, San Francisco finally won and I was ready to admit that the city had finally sucked all the life out of me. It wasn’t a big deal, really, and I don’t even care to elaborate. It was just one more weekend’s plans and excitement thwarted by various factors that normal people living in normal cities don’t have to deal with, and I finally just cracked…

I know a lot of completely reasonable and rational people who like it here. I wish them well as I prepare to free up one more mildly substandard and somewhat overpriced apartment in a couple of months…

Thanks to my wonderful husband for putting up with my breakdown this weekend. I promise I’ll be better as soon as the doctor ups my thyroid medicine just a little more, baby…

January Past

The Ghost of Mid-January Past:

Twenty-five years ago today: I was in high school, worried about getting my first “D”…
Twenty years ago this week: I was depressed about unrequited love and that sort of thing…
Fifteen years ago this week: tearoom sex at UNCG…
Nine years ago yesterday: This website made its debut, albeit under a somewhat different title, URL, and format…
Five years ago Sunday: I bought my current G4, and it’s definitely due for a replacement, despite being very dependable and in damned good shape for its advanced age…

I feel like I should do something important and journal-worthy today, but I’m not sure exactly what…

Randomly Monday

Saw the new Sylvan Learning Center commercial this morning, featuring yet another annoying, doe-eyed, blonde Mormon child and his annoying, doe-eyed, blonde Mormon mom. When will they just go ahead and start using the tagline “Sylvan Learning Centers: Fixing all the damage those horrible brown-skinned children have inflicted on your child’s education”?

Or maybe: “Sylvan Learning Centers: Cheaper than White Flight”…

—

Every time I walk by the old Pacific Stock Exchange and see how it’s been stripped of all its dignity and transformed into an upscale gym, I think about how I’d almost rather that they’d torn the damned thing down. Even if you aren’t a supporter of capitalism — and I realize that a significant number of San Franciscans are rather ambivalent about this particular economic system — you have to wish they could have found some better use for a building with that much history than to turn it into a trendy latter-day sweatlodge for vain, self-obsessed yuppies…

Alas..

—-

I finally asked around and found out that yes, there is in fact a San Francisco city ordinance responsible for the fact that every building in the whole bloody city is freezing cold all winter long and stiflingly hot during September and October.

Enacted a year before I arrived in the city, the Structural Temperature Equality Ordinance of 1991 required that no heating or air conditioning system of any sort be employed in any San Francisco building unless said system were designed to REDUCE the temperature during the winter and ELEVATE it during the summer. It further stated that no variance of more than three degrees shoud be allowed between the outdoor and indoor air temperature within any building designed for human occupancy…

I think it had something to do with preserving the sensibilities of homeless people without heated or air-conditioned shopping carts…

And yes, I’m making this up. However, keep in mind that (a) there really DOES seem to be no discernible climate control anywhere in this godforsaken city, and (b) our Board of Supervisors is NOT above passing really silly and pointless legislation…

More People I Hate

More people I hate:

Stupid Bay Area soccer moms who are intimately acquainted with the struggles of starving children and oppressed peoples on the other side of the planet but who somehow remain completely and woefully oblivious to the people two feet behind them in line at the store while they start searching for their credit cards or checkbooks AFTER their stuff is rung up and while they stand there rearranging their purses and blocking the ATM terminal for half an hour after paying so no one else can check out…
Corvette-driving, ugly, old men with bad hair who tailgate people driving in the slow lane on the freeway. Does anyone under 50 (or with good hair) EVER purchase a Corvette? No. It’s marketed to a”rebellious” old white guy in the midst of a major mid-life crisis who wants a “hot” car but also still wants the familiar GM/Delco stereo with all the buttons in exactly the same place they were in the Oldsmobile he traded in for the Corvette. These cars are apparently designed for people who want to drive really aggressively but are too wimpy to do so anywhere other than the far right lane…
Newscasters who repeatedly refer to rain as “bad weather”…
Rachel Konrad, for no other reason than allowing a word like “exergaming” to be used in a legitimate news piece and thus potentially to be used again by someone I might actually have to HEAR saying it…