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Saturday, November 9, 2002

How Dry I, Um...Wasn't.

I'm treating myself a little, calming down from from this hectic week with sushi and a nice porter. I don't actually drink at home very often, but I love a good chocolatey porter on a cool evening. Calories be damned.

As a rule, it's always insane at work on the day you need to leave early. Sure enough, after a couple of the crazy projects we're launching exploded in my face during the day, I ran frantically to the train to volunteer at Bingo Thursday (it looks like somebody in Geno's party was a big winner, too.) So I came home last night and had a "dry" night, rain not withstanding.

Keep reading before you send me a medal for temperance, though...Wednesday night, The Boyfriend brought me along to The Great Whisk(e)y Debate, a PR event for the Jim Beam beverage company. While a lot of the "debate" was clearly scripted, the two representatives were at least fun to watch. (That slight detachment is one of the benefits of seeing PR events from the inside.) We tasted two glasses of scotch and two of bourbon, and "judges" from their Marketing Group (!) were supposed to decide whose case was more convincing; you can probably guess what their decision was. [Ah, those PR folks, aren't they just absolutely fabulous? (Or then again, maybe not.)] The Boyfriend and his friends enjoy bourbon, and their minds were not much swayed towards scotch. With wine over dinner, they asked me which I liked better, the scotch or the bourbon?

I smiled and said, "Gin."

02:48 AM PST (link)

Friday, November 8, 2002

Moistened Ears.

You know how beautiful a landscape looks when it first snows? Every shape is softened and gentle? That's what the rain in San Francisco is like to the sound of the city. The nightclub crowds are gone, the auto dealer behind our house doesn't move cars early in the morning, and a soft hush falls over the omnipresent traffic noise. I do such an efficient job at tuning out the noise that I'm always surprised when I don't hear it. Even the upstairs neighbors seem to stop their Sarah Winchester construction project for the evening. I too love waking up and lying silently under the blankets, enjoying the rare, slightly magical, feeling of widespread peace in the middle of a big city.

Of course, eventually dirt turns the melting snow grey, the sludge freezes into dangerous sheets of ice and it's all just an wet, ugly annoyance. The heavy rain here is kind of like that too. The quiet gets punctuated by emergency generators (at least we have power at home so far) and squealing brakes of insane drivers who've apparantly never seen rain before; the MUNI station near my house floods; and the trains and buses are full of wet, lightly steaming, whiny, irritated San Franciscans.

Not me, of course...I never whine.

01:59 PM PST (link)

Wednesday, November 6, 2002

I'm Not Sure Who's Fooling Who Here.

Oh Zion please remove your glove
dispel every trace of His spoken word
That has lodged in my vortex
-Tori Amos, "Pancake"

Liberals in denial: trust me, don't think about it. Think about cute little fuzzy creatures or something. Contemplate it too long and you'll just end up feeling like shit. Do not picture conservatives dancing around, making nanny-nanny-boo-boo faces. Do not get stinking drunk and contemplate buying a weapon. Do not give up and leave your doubleparked SUV in front of handicapped spaces at McDonalds. Do something else instead.

I wouldn't recommend distracting yourself with a lot of pointless quizzes, though. What a waste of time.

11:55 AM PST (link)

Monday, November 4, 2002

One Last Political Post, Then More Quizzes.

I've got a bit of reading to do, yet. I haven't cracked the massive voting pamphlet and want to try to vote in the morning tomorrow. The size of the San Francisco Ballot is a little daunting, but I'll vote. The hardest part for me is always choosing judges, which is when I use the rule: "When in doubt, vote no."

One of the few decisions I'm sure about is No on Proposition N. I don't believe the system we have now is great, but I also don't think that Gavin Newsom's plan is the right direction. I cannot accept as fair paying the non-disabled half of people on General Assistance $1.27 an hour for labor in the city. I don't think that Prop. N will help people secure housing; there simply aren't enough low-cost dwellings or even shelter beds available. I definitely notice an increase in panhandling before the 1st and 15th of the month; I think this will be worse if N passes, as we have yet more people running out of money during the month. (No, I also don't recommend giving out cash on the streets; that's what General Assistance is for. I do believe in giving to shelters or the San Francisco Food Bank to provide short-term help and to organizations like Habitat for Humanity for longer-term help.)

I hate to sound defeatist, but I suspect that N will pass. Even if it doesn't really affect the bottom line, the implication is there that it "stops waste." Oddly, I'm also voting no on Prop. O, the counter-proposal to Prop. N. I think O is closer to the right way to do this, but I'm not convinced that we've got the right plan yet. There's also a bit of me that thinks if San Franciscans really think that N is the solution, they should have to live with its consequences, but that's perhaps cutting off my nose to spite my face. I'm just hoping that the consequences don't include more people sleeping in the alley behind my apartment.

Note: I ended up voting for O—not that it mattered in the end, but figured that voting No out of spite was counterproductive.

06:56 PM PST (link)