Week Ending 26 October

This week the warm-up continued and I actually got to wear shorts in San Francisco!

Beach Bunny

Irwin and I made the trek to Golden Gate Beach TWICE this week. Saturday, we got there a bit later than I had hoped, but still had time to wander andsecure a spot away from the dogs, paddle balls, and frisbees flying around the beach. We returned the next day and found it a lot more crowded even though it felt a little cooler. Sunday's time change meant that we could climb the cliff and watch the sunset. It seemed to take ages for the disc of the sun to flatten to a thin strip of brightness and finally extinguish itself in the sea. As we walked back to the car, it seemed to get quite dark quickly and we were off to the Eagle to find the Tamale Lady and have some food.

Friday Music Night

My friendster Jim emailed with an invite to his partner Chris' performance on Friday. I had to wait for my pal Jono and we arrived a bit past midnight. Chris had already performed, but the band on stage was pretty good and we knew a few people there. I had hoped that the electro-clash scene in SF would be big enough by now to support more than one club on a Friday night but the crowd was fairly sparse. The space is great and I really hope they can get something established there soon.

Scary Movie 3

After a day at the beach, a quick meal and a mad dash to the theatre, Irwin and I saw Scary Movie 3. He hadn't seen the first two in the series, but the franchise isn't chronological so that didn't matter. The producers and writers from the first two films were noticably abscent from this project. David Zucker was brought in and I could definately see his handiwork in a few of the slapstick scenes and the use of absurd nomenclature and the addition of Leslie Neilson. This continues the fright film spoof theme, but focused almost exclusively on spoofing the films, Signs, The Ring, Bring It On, and 8 Mile. The first Scary Movie spoofed at least 20 films and was funny without needing to see the source films being spoofed. While the wider cultural references were noticably diminished, the movie was still amusing and a great way to kick off the Halloween season.

Cabled Q Part 2

I got cable TV last week and I'm totally shocked at how many commercials there are. As a West Coast viewer, I also feel short-changed because it seems that most of the Viacom channels are all geared towards East Coast viewers. They don't have broadcast delay so they show programs twice. I guess it's good if you want to watch some prime-time shows early and catch other prime-time shows at the appropriate time, but to me it just feels like they're taking the cheap road out with less authentic programming... that and the fact that MTV is so dummed down it's like all Jessica Simpson and Ashton Kutcher all the time. I'm still trying to figure out what TLC stands for too. I thought it was supposed to be "The Learning Channel" but now it's like home decorating 24/7... at least now I can watch great 'bad' comedys like "Not Another Teen Movie" and "Airplane"

Sunspot STORM

A strong dose of space weather hit Earth on Friday — but the initial storm of charged particles from the sun wasn’t enough to endanger power grids, as feared. The event is presenting a nice opportunity to view sunspots, though safe viewing techniques must be employed to prevent eye damage...

Election '03

Acting mayor
In a super stupid move, SF Mayor Willie Brown went on a trip to Asia and appointed District 6 Supervisor, Chris Daley to be acting mayor for a day. Chris Daley represents my district so I guess I should be stoked that he could be in a positon to effect positive change for my neighbourhood. Daley and Brown have been at odds in the past. Their adversarial relationship almost cost Daley his job at the last election. I guess the alternatives on the board of Supervisors are all up for re-election or are running for mayor so Daley seemed 'safe'. Instead of leaving the "mayor for a day" title as the perfunctory ceremony it usually is, Daley appointed two new commissioners to the board that oversees the insurance industry in SF. Needless to say, Willie cut his trip short and rushed back to SF.

Election '04

Dean looks tiny on 60 Minutes
While I like his anti-war stance and his opposition positions on domestic issues, I've had some reservations about Howard Dean in recent weeks. He was on the CBS show, 60 Minutes last Sunday. Seeing him wandering around crowds and interacting with voters, it seemed strange to me that lots of women around him towered over him. I had some time this week to research online and I found an article about the Presidential Height Index. While it's not reliable for the primaries, it's interesting to see how it's been wrong only one and a half times since television hijacked the election process. I'm not sure how much I believe in this theory, but as further proof of it's validity, California governor Gray Davis met with governor-elect Arnie this week and Davis was quite a bit shorter than Schwarzenegger. In the last three days of the recall election, the race was all about the two of them going head-to-head and the taller guy won.

Asian Shrub
Much was made about the shrub's trip to Australia as he drummed up additional sympathy for his wars. Aussie PM, John Howard was super smart and pulled his troops out of Iraq when Bush declared 'victory'. The Aussie economy is in relatively great shape at the moment and his opposition is totally weak now so it was basically Howard helping Bush and leveraging his strong position to get US tarifs and farm subsidies reduced to allow more imports of Aussie dairy products. As a vegan, I'm morally opposed to dairy products and as a patriot, I'm offended that the president would turn his back on American farm families just to get support for Bush's empire-building.

Power Play to the Base Bans Late-Term Abortion
To appease their extremist base of supporters, the Republican controlled Congress banned what it calls 'partial birth' abortions this week. While it is most likely to be over-turned by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, it's a shame that the reactionary and religious extremists have subverted the democratic process to legislate their stringent and limited views.

I was reminded of Winston Churchill's great quote: "America always does the right thing, unfortunately it's always after they've exhausted every other option."

The Age of Imperialism

Death Toll Higher Than Ever
This week more Americans died because Bush lied.

Priorities
Republicans are far more interested in fixing schools, roads and infrastructure in Iraq instead of fixing schools, roads, and infrastructure in America.

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