seriously?

Dear guy on the 38 bus,

Do you seriously think that The Joy of Gay Sex is appropriate reading material during evening rush hour?

Also, I can't decide whether the fact that it was a library book makes it better or worse.

Sincerely,

Karen

there are some things that should be illegal

...and profusely sweaty, balding, foggy-eyeglassed men at the gym on stationary bikes grasping the Wall Street Journal in one hand and checking their stocks via their iPhone in the other hand are definitely one of those things.

making headlines

When I work out at the gym I frequently turn on a news channel on the little personal TV screen they have attached to each treadmill and watch without sound. As you no doubt have noticed, it is now de rigueur to have a constantly running stream of mini-headlines scrolling underneath the main features. As a linguist I dig seeing the attempted synopses of various stories into such brief snippets; often it feels like you can only understand the little headlines if you're already familiar with the stories anyway.

For instance, today they periodically ran a line that said something like "Comment leads to Missouri standoff." OK...thanks for letting us know! The other day it was "Caylee's grandfather under suicide watch." Who the fuck is Caylee and why do her grandfather's death-wish issues warrant time on the national news? Sometimes the headlines are funny for entirely other reasons; my favorite one from today was "Men see bikini-clad women as objects, scientists say." Shouldn't that be a headline from The Onion? Who are these scientists? I want to know who designed the study protocol for that one. And whether any of my tax dollars were involved.

Speaking of questionable uses of my hard-earned money, the San Francisco Municipal Railway this morning provided yet another notable public transportation experience. I was heading to work on the 38, and an older woman in a dingy hoodie and sparkly but tattered skirt was sitting near me. Her personal odor was not altogether agreeable, but I've seen and smelled a lot worse on MUNI, and since I was reading a magazine I only really noticed her when she started softly and repeatedly lilting "James Brown!" in dulcet tones, followed by the observation "He and I are from the same place." The she looked at me and asked if I knew the time. I was unwilling to dig out my cell phone, so I showed my bare wrists and said "Sorry, I don't."

"You don't know the time?"

"Sorry."

"I have to take my psych meds."

I smiled and nodded sympathetically. Then she asked, "What are you?"

"What am I?"

"Yeah, what are you?"

I hesitated and replied, "I don't understand the question."

"Are you a nurse?"

machine learning

As I have mentioned previously, I have a fairly severe allergy to science fiction, but enough smart people had told me that I would nonetheless enjoy the new Battlestar Galactica series that I finally went ahead and Netflixed it. And I do indeed like it well enough, particularly the parts involving Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, who is a hot, blond fighter pilot with a no-bullshit attitude, and who also is very hot.

Moving right along. So, I just started season 3, which so far I am liking the best of anything in the series so far. Based on the initial two episodes I feel it can perhaps best be summarized as Watergate Meets Birkenau. In other words, exactly the sort of kitten-filled happy rainbow festival I tend to love.

Oddly enough, James--whose brain inhabits science fiction approximately 98% of the time--had not ever watched BSG, so I got him started on it as well. When I visited him in Los Angeles this past weekend I commented that the machine Cylons really freaked me out, but the human-form Cylons didn't scare me much at all. James looked shocked.

"For me it's exactly the opposite," he said.

"Really?"

"I understand how machines work. Why would anyone be afraid of a machine? That's stupid. That would be like...being afraid of your car. Or something."

"I'm a little afraid of your espresso machine, to be honest."

I was mainly (although not entirely) joking, but then I found a photo of his espresso machine's innards:


People, am I wrong? Would you turn your back on this monster? Give me Number Six any day of the week.

flakes

My typical San Francisco MUNI experiences usually fall somewhere between barely tolerable (see Exhibit A: Spare the Fucking Air Days) and excruciating (see Exhibit B: Filthy Crack Addicts), but once in a while there are some perks to the forced commingling of residents from all over this fair city. For instance, the other morning on the 38L line I got to overhear one half of a phone conversation that went a little something like this:

Phone Guy (PG): Eloy, I don't appreciate you calling me a thief. I didn't take your money. I don't do that kind of thing. I don't like it when you say I'm stealing from you.

Woman sitting with PG: He was in the middle of the street, he went downstairs to get another beer! What's he saying?

PG: OK, OK, listen Eloy. I went and got you ALL that body wash, and then I came back and you GAVE me 18 dollars to buy shampoo.

Woman: I had to lead him back upstairs!

PG: Well then...Eloy, Eloy...listen to me listen to me. Where did all that Selsun Blue come from then? How did you end up with five bottles of Selsun Blue? Explain that to me. If I stole that money, how did you end up with five bottles of Selsun Blue? Don't call me a thief!

Woman: He was afraid that his girlfriend would see he was drunk again! That's why, he went down to get ANOTHER beer at the store, he already had three and he went to get another. He didn't even know where he was! What's he saying? What's he saying?

PG: Eloy, THEN HOW DID YOU END UP WITH ALL THAT SELSUN BLUE??

fair trade

James and I have a symbiotic relationship of sorts. He does all kinds of things for me that I am probably technically capable of doing but that I either (a) loathe and/or (2) would put off forever if left to my own devices. Examples of such activities include setting up audio-visual equipment, arranging and installing wireless service, assembling IKEA products, talking on the phone to just about any company about anything, ensuring I have proper web security, installing cabinets and shelving, removing dents from my car, supervising and assisting movers, understanding major real estate transactions, and so forth. In exchange I occasionally knit him a pair of socks.

All this is just to supply some background information to explain why James was working on my taxes yesterday rather than allowing me to simply pay an accountant to do it the way I usually do. According to James, my tax situation this year is so straightforward as to render a professional accountant superfluous. You know, because in 2008 I started paying interest on two mortgages, received royalty payments on various knitwear designs, earned stock dividends, paid property taxes on two houses, and god knows what else. Sounds very 1040-EZ, right? Anyway, so he was using TurboTax software, which has you answer various questions in order to establish what all you need to declare, and at one point he piped up from the next room, "Did you get any Ottoman Turkish empire settlement payments last year? Because that falls under 'other income.'"

"Oh crap," I replied, "I forgot about that. (pause) Oh, wait, no...I bought an ottoman last year. I get those two things confused."

"OK, good. I think I can skip this line then."

I'm hoping James doesn't read this blog, because so far I have him convinced that our little arrangement involves an equitable exchange of goods and services. For what it's worth, here is a photo of the hand knit socks I found in his dresser just now:



He also has somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 hand knit sweaters, as well as quite a few mittens, hats, and scarves. The fellow lives in Los Angeles, for god's sake...he needs help keeping warm.

historiae animalium

There is absolutely nothing funny about half your beloved colleagues getting laid off unexpectedly, so I'm not going to discuss what happened at my company this week beyond saying that there is absolutely nothing funny about half your beloved colleagues getting laid off unexpectedly.

I am back down in Los Angeles for the three-day weekend. I was reminded on the way here that the last time I went through Oakland airport it was just a day or two after the "miracle on the Hudson," which, as you already know unless you've been living under a rock with your iPod turned up to 11 with the Ride of the Valkyries on repeat and a silky sleep mask over your eyes, involved a plane that crash landed in a river on account of birds being sucked into its engines. There is a piece of artwork at the Oakland airport called "Auspicious Cranes," and it struck me last time that this piece of art was maybe no longer so appropriate lining a corridor people walk through as they are about to board planes at an airport that sits on the shore of a major bay, seeing as it basically depicts a bunch of large water birds whose heads appear to be bloodied:



But maybe that's just me.

As many of you know, almost nothing pleases me more than getting a chance to deploy the "inappropriate animals" tag on this blog, and today I have occasion to do so yet again, not only on account of the mangled cranes but also because we were walking at the L.A. Arboretum this morning and encountered an extra-large grade A coyote sauntering across the path ahead of us. As we got closer, he stopped and turned around with his big ol' coyote head poking up over the side of an embankment and I swear to god all he needed was a jaunty bandana around his neck and he'd have been ready to act as mascot for a cheesy Southwest souvenir shop.

"It's a good thing there aren't any roadrunners around here," James opined. "Yeah," I said, "That would be nothing but chaos."