That is some kind of amnesia.

Today I went and had some crap burned off my face. Oh yeah. That is how I'm starting this post. It's true.

I had these little bumps that I knew would turn into some giant 3rd baby, and since they were small I figured I'd get them before they left some giant crater sized scar. I figured they would just ice them off.

Oh no. They took a soldering iron to me. The Dr couldn't even see them, yet I could feel them to the touch.

I have a theory that all the ginormous bumps you see on peoples faces started out really small, and before they knew it they were so big that you'd have a huge scar if you removed it. So they just leave them there. And before long they start winking at you.

Anyway. The thing is - that I always forget about the after results of having these things removed. I honestly look like I've been mauled by a large snake. And, since I expected them to be iced I didn't account for how dark burned skin looks. Black sharpy dot dark.

Plus, they are 5 times the size of the actual skin tag I was having removed.

Now I get to walk around for a couple of says with people giving me that sideways look like I have a third eye. Good thing I'm not self conscience.

Oh.. wait.

It isn't glamorous, but it is a force for good in this world.

This is the only thing I found interesting at MacWorld. Oh yeah. I can see you looking at this picture thinking "what the eff!". That's all she's got for me?

Okay. I can see you don't fully understand its beauty yet. It's a dual power outlet with two USB ports. And why is it important? Power vampires.

Every device needs to have some special power vampire to charge them. Every single one of them need to have a different shape and size. It's the most irritating thing on the planet.

Instead of just being able to plug in two items, you need to hunt and peck through all your devices to see which ones will fit together on one outlet. Often you have these two giant vampires. Or they are oddly shaped. And, companies charge you for them. Irritating.

This scene is repeated all over my house.



If this weren't a light outlet, my phone vapire - which is the top one could be transfered to USB and I'd have use of one of the plugs.

So, I wound up ordering a couple of these things from Fastmac. We will see how they work out.

Happy Valenspines day.

It has been a really long time since my back has gone out. It used to do so with some frequency. I got up yesterday feeling fine. Then, I apparently did some simple mundane activity. Like breathing.

And, bam I can't turn my head. The frustrating thing is - if it would have happened an hour sooner I could have gone to the chiropractor.

Also frustrating? These things always happening when I'm doing seemingly nothing. I've been wielding a sawsall for two weekends, and I'm completely fine. I can do all sort of menial labor. Nothing happens.

Yet once I lifted my leg to get onto a reclining bike, and I was effed for a week.

Anyway I spent the next hour debating whether I should go to the city. And, if I wouldn't have already paid to get into MacWorld I might have stayed home. But, I of course did what any reasonable person would do. I rode the train to the city and went to an event where I had to turn my head every two seconds.

Anyway, I only saw one thing there that I thought was interesting. Which I will probably post tomorrow. I didn't see anyone fantastic like Kevin Smith.

Today apparently my back is making sure I know who the bitch is here. And, I'm pretty sure it's me.

So, now I'm hanging around the house. Probably playing Bioshock. Which is a bummer because it's beautiful today.

That is all.

When marketing pays off.

I never - ever - give panhandlers money. But, this guy managed to get a buck out of me. And, I gave it to him happily.

I just really liked his creativity. Plus, once we made our trade. His picture for a buck - he didn't ask for more. It made me think that if they just got more creative, maybe they would make more money.

The sad signs are really played.

I just saw a woman with her boyfriends face tattood on her ass. He looked like one of the three stooges.

It's the rapture. Again.

I'm not much into sequels. I know! I just saw half my audience recoil. But, Bioshock was done so masterfully I couldn't resist. Honestly one of the best games on the planet.

I played it through my whole breast reduction recovery. And it wasn't just the vicodine making me think the game was awesome. Seriously.

So, on to Bioshock 2. If you don't see me for a couple of weeks.....

Just kidding. I can't sit still that long. Honestly though. The game industry has been dismal. So, it's nice to have something interesting.

I don't know why this still shocks me.

I hope to get off this soon, but almost every day now an article comes out about this. I think if everyone would have known how much we were paying these people, this would have come to a stop a long time ago - and our state would not be many billions in the hole.

Let me point out that this would take at least 4 well paid engineers to cover the salary of just one of the 67 of these people making 200 grand+ in SF.

From calfire.blogspot.

"San Francisco Fire Department Chief Joanne Hayes-White is by all accounts good at her job -- and she's well compensated for it. Hayes-White received $293,869.93 for her services in 2009 -- but she's not the Fire Department's top earner.

That honor went to Battalion Chief Johnny Lo. Lo's base pay was $101,164.21, but he took home $53,409.64 in overtime and $139,549.39 in a category called "other pay" (cashed in sick days and vacation time) for a grand earning of $294,123.24.

Joining Lo and Hayes-White atop the $200,000+ plateau were 67 other firefighters -- and not just the SFFD's top brass. Paramedics, investigators, a plumbing supervisor and the "marine engineer of fire boats" all took home more than $200,000, according to a departmental wage list obtained by The Appeal."

Sellouts.

"Top Silicon Valley groups to hire special ops person to ID & attract more fed funding in response to forecast of slow tech recovery."

I can't even tell you how deeply this tweet from moneyscope bothers me. The beautiful thing about Silicon Valley was that we were so independent from the government. We had so many amazing ideas that all we had to worry about was getting taxed to death for them.

Now this is what we've become. Another entity sucking from the teet of government.

All of you - hand over your wallet.

You know, I've been trying to feed you happy stuff. But some days I just can't take it. When the city counsel in L.A. this week decided to postpone for 30 days any vote for layoffs in an effort to find other solutions for revenue - you know what they came up with? Selling t-shirts and key chains at city hall.

No seriously. HT here.



Cities everywhere have been faced with 12 straight months of declining tax revenue, and these people think they don't have to lay anyone off.

How do they think the salaries of the San Luis Sheriff making 772,000 and his boss making 340,000 a year are going to be paid? Here. Through t-shirts?

I know San Luis is not in L.A., but it's just another example of pension spiking abuses all over California. Everyone from the Sheriffs office to trash management. Huge ginormous pension spiking. Paid for life.

And, you will get to pay for it. I don't care what state you are in. I mean, they aren't going to let California fail. Just ask Germany. Yet they refuse to lay anyone off. You guys are good for the money. Right?

Honestly, you are dead inside if you don't think this is cute.

Just sayin.

Bet you haven't seen this before.

I'm going to give you something unusual - because really, all I want to do is freak out about what is going on with California. So.. this is like a pallet cleanser.



Personally, these things look like more stubborn bunnies. Oh wait! They live with bunnies too.

You can't keep me out.

So - last year Mr. and I went to this thing called the International Gift Fair in San Fransisco. It was okay. I mean it had some funny stuff like "Answer me Jesus", Life is Crap t-shirts, and Piperoid Characters.

It's one of those things that you can't really get into unless you are in the trade. Which I'm not. Not even close. But, somehow last year everyone was still in a daze from the economic meltdown, and they let me pay to get in.

This year, I thought I'd be able to do that again.

I walked up to the registration counter and asked to pay for two guest tickets. Which is 80 bucks. Oh no. This was not happening this year. No sliding under the table. No bribing the registrar. No way. No how. I could have paid them a thousand dollars, they weren't letting me in.

Or so they thought. I did manage to get in. I might have to crash the place next year - so, I'm not saying how. But, I got in for free.

Now, this all seems sort of silly to me. I was willing to pay the fee that they would charge for a guest of an exibitor, but they wouldn't let me. Somehow these people think that not allowing anyone outside of the trade, is going to keep out the looky loos. Which might be so. But, there is some dollar amount in which this is also successful. The stuff isn't that great that people are going to spend 80 bucks to get in.

Honestly, that is about my limit for something I'm not sure I'm going to enjoy. Yet, they totally lost out on the revenue, and I managed to get in anyway. This did mean I wasn't able to get any shots, but honestly - I'm not sure if I would have gotten any shots anyway. I tested the water a couple of times and got really suspicious replies. So I didn't try any further. It's a really weird protective trade group. There are high tech companies with less fear of espionage. Seriously.

There was only one thing I thought was mildly interesting were these things called Splats. Which I got sort of a crappy video of with my new flip camera. Did you know those things are the size of a cell phone! If I wasn't trying to get video on the down low, it would have been better. Website here. Their youtube vid here.



That woman with the Fran Drescher laugh is not me.

Genious.

This vid is kinda old. But still.

Can - meet - road.

Read this sentence, then I will give you some context.

From the L.A. Times.
"Councilman Jose Huizar suggested that the city balance its books by borrowing more money. And Councilman Bill Rosendahl vowed to protect the city's calligraphers, the handful of artists who design ornate proclamations that elected officials hand out to constituents."

Oh.... for.... shits... sakes! The wheels are about to come off the bus. This is crazy, crazy, game of chicken.

You see. The city of L.A. has finally come to the conclusion they need to start axing people or go bankrupt. And this is the ridiculousness we have to put up with. Who even knew we were paying calligraphers? Don't they have some computer font that might handle that?

With President Money Bags and his "if you've got a better solution, worship tour" perhaps everyone hasn't noticed tax revenue is down. For 4 straight quarters. Don't people elect a president because they think he might have some solutions? Not say "I got nuttin'. What you got"? I mean, I didn't elect him. But if I did! That is what I would have had in mind for someone ruling the free world.

Hoping and praying (if you do that sort of thing) that the economy would miraculously get better hasn't really worked. And now, I guess it is finally time for the "kiss your ass goodbye stage".

Oh shit, really? You haven't noticed that Los Angeles has become almost completely beside themselves the last couple of days. Things are so bad that for every single day they delay booting these people off the payroll they have to lay off 4 more people.

Normally I might feel bad that people are loosing their jobs. But, no one in California seems to understand where money comes from. And, that President Money Bags has put his boot on the people who actually do produce revenue. So what the eff did they think would happen? I guess there is this limitless tub of Obama calligraphy money.

It's a good thing he has that great smile, and I guess is a comedian all of a sudden. Because his ability to bend time and space is about to not work so much.

It comes and goes.

Yesterday was one of the only days we've had a full day of sun for a while. I don't know how long actually because I just get a little claustrophobic and stop caring how many days it been. But, anyway, the days it isn't raining - we've gotten socked in with this oppressive fog. Which is sort of weird for our area.

So we stayed home and did some garden prep, and rocked the baby back ribs. Winter is about the only time you can bbq around here where you don't have to worry about setting a wild land fire. Except we aren't in a wild land. Just a few years of drought.

Anyway. I'm going to give you my bbq sauce recipe which I nicked from someone else. I'm sure you can modify it any way that suits you.

6 ounces of tomato paste. Which is about 3/4's of a large can of paste. Or just put the whole thing in. I don't think it makes that much difference. I don't use the full can.

1 cup brown sugar.
1 cup stone ground mustard.
1 cup catchup.
1/2 cup soy sauce. I use low salt.
1/4 cup vinegar.
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce.
Fresh garlic. I'll say a shitload. Your mileage may vary.
Honey. I like the crystallised stuff if you can find it. Which usually comes in a honey bear, and drives you insane trying to get out of said bear.
2 cups whiskey. Canadian preferable. But, whatever makes you happy.

Throw 2/3'rds of this mix in with a couple of racks into the oven. For a couple of hours. Roughly.

Use the other 3rd on basting the ribs on the bbq. Cook just long enough to infuse all the of the sauce. But, you must use all the sauce. Mr S. coats the ribs probably 5 times.

In other news. My dirt is finally starting to look awesome. I'm doing pink tomatos this year. At least attempt. Last year I got blight.

You know I'm only in it for the weird stuff.

I think he's trying to steal your soul. He is. I'm telling you.

If you like lolcats - you'll love poodlecats.

Why do guys think they can pick their noses in cars? I see it all the time.

Biggest tool - ever.

The one thing you can love about President Money Bags is that he manages to piss just about everyone off. His base. His enemies. Whomever. What does he care? He's got a great smile!

It really is the most fascinating thing to watch.

Look, I don't want to get into a circle jirk about who is the biggest prick. There are a ton of candidates. But, when Wall Street is unhappy - everyone is unhappy. Even people who don't have anything invested in the market. I still believe the only thing that has kept everything together, was them pumping Wall Street full of money so the market went up.

So who would be surprised if when PMB's stabs them full of holes they might send a full market correction to make sure who knows which one is the bitch. I can see the whole thing playing out a little like "hey - you are my bitch. No! You are my bitch".

I'm guessing though, he is about to get his ass handed to him. A savage market correction will do that. Not to mention - didn't he hold a jobs summit almost exactly two months ago? Where he basically made it seem like jobs came from the tooth fairy? I'm guessing the jobs data for next week is going to be a bloodbath.

And, what is he going to do with all those "funemployment" people who are falling off beni's within the next month or so. You know - those people who thought they'd take a little time off to relax for a while, and wound up finding out they couldn't get a job for like ..... two years.

Random thoughts.

Remember a long time back, that French woman who had her face mauled by her pet dog, and later had a transplant? Story here.

All the time it played out in the news I always wondered what clicked in the dogs head to make it do that. I've owned lots of dogs would have never thought such a thing could happen. Sure, they might bite. But chewing a face off. Not in the world.

Then a couple of days ago this video came out where a guy was capping on a drunk chick by having her dog french kiss her. Which obviously is weird in itself, but I swear to you - by the end of the video I could totally see how a dog might become so obsessive to chew a person's face off.

Yeah, that's right.

It isn't so much I'm not trying to get you interesting stuff. It's just stuff isn't that interesting.

I went to a laser thing today, and apparently if you've seen one laser - you've seen them all. I know! What is this world coming to if I can't get excited about lasers?

There was one thing I found interesting. It had to do with holographic displays. Which is simultaneously hard to describe and capture. And, these guys were crowded around it like the shroud of turon.

I got the impression they weren't going to let me take pictures of their super secret projection of images onto glass.

So there you go. Bubkis.

At least when I got out I realised that the media is so bored - they were still all over at the cult of Steve. 5 hours later. I didn't even leave my house until two hours after Apple announced. So, it isn't just me.

Crazies.

Today Mr. S and I rode the Bart train up to San Fransisco. Which is usually a non event.

Today I was sure there was going to be a youtube moment. There is this new trend lately where people post the videos of people fighting on public transportation. It apparently happens all the time.

Soon after we got on, there was this commotion in the front and this woman was yelling "I'm going to fuck that bitch up"! There was a small scuffle and the two women disengaged and walked past us. The one still screaming "I'm going to fuck that bitch up" a bunch of times. Nothing became of it.

The other funny thing was - I was eavesdropping on the people in the seat behind me. They caught my attention because one guy was telling an older lady something about when you have AT&T service that one line goes to you, and another line goes to the FBI. The lady and the guy were convinced that the FBI was spying on them. But, didn't seem to care that I was.

For like 20 minutes they were talking about it. The older woman was super paranoid and was convinced she was being spied on. Which made me wonder what she was up to. Drugs. Racketeering? What?

You have to be impressed. Don't you?

This has got to be one of the most creative ways to try to kill yourself......ever.

I mean, this guy must have really put some serious thought into this. I've seen some crazy shit in my days, but thinking you could kill yourself by jamming a pen into your brain - is possibly way up there on crazy. The nose, sure. But the eyes?

Justin Helzer attempts death row suicide by jamming pens in his eyes
Sacramento Bee

"San Quentin death-row inmate Justin Helzer, convicted in 2004 of murdering five people, including the daughter of blues guitarist Elvin Bishop, tried to kill himself and is hospitalized in critical condition, sources confirmed Friday.

The sources said Helzer apparently tried to kill himself by jamming pens in each of his eyes. Although he didn't kill himself, the sources said Helzer did succeed in paralyzing himself on the right side and causing a level of brain damage that has yet to be determined."

Stunning.

You know that old saying "we are from the government and we are here to help"?

I think they should change it to "we are from the government, and we didn't see this coming".

How an administration had such a blind spot to unemployment - I will never understand. I mean, it's a huge - block out the sun kind of blind spot.

Yet, somewhere from when I wrote this post in September, and December - I started to feel out of sync with the nation.

I was sure if people weren't rioting in the streets after Christmas, we were just going to take it. I started to marvel at the tolerance of people, and couldn't understand why they weren't pissed off. I started adjusting my expectations and settled in for max pain.

As jaw gaping as this whole year has been, many times I just had to resolve myself to saying "the world just needs to continue to burn for them to figure it out. It has to happen this way for them to learn". After all, the nation seemed to be in this corporations are evil mode. I thought.. maybe they didn't want jobs. Knowing full well I might be caught in the rubble.

The recession has taught me that Americans are a complacent bunch, and the only thing that wakes us from our slumber is huge painful life altering events.

In the last month, I started telling Mr S. "I think people might finally be getting mad". But, by this point we'd both become skeptical. So we just shrugged it off.

Then the Brown thing happened, and it was like the whole world stopped. Like the administration hit a brick wall going a hundred miles an hour. Honestly today I feel like I woke up in a completely different world. Bernanke is getting shit, people are reversing themselves on the global warming crap. The health care bill is in jeopardy, and the President Money Bags all of a sudden thinks jobs are important.

I mean... what the hell happened? I think I might have whiplash. I mean, I'm happy. But, I'm fascinated at how quickly that whole thing turned.

I only wish this wasn't Schwarzenegger's last year in office. I want to vote him out just for spite. That guy - I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years he turned up with Alzheimer's like Reagan. He has just turned into some sort of a crazy guy. Constantly spouting movie cliches. To reinforce this thought, just this week he mixed up Feinstien and Boxer. Here.

After all, I can't really hope California would toss any of the libs out. Can I? One thing at a time I guess.

Wooo hoo. Better than Carter.

It was back in the summer that Mr S. made this prophetic prediction. I blogged about it here. He said "we'll be lucky if we get out of this being as bad as the Carter era"

Which, I will say again - I thought was preposterous. 18% interest! Ridiculous. I still doubt we will get to 18%, but it does make you bust out laughing when the California media polls for the first time start reporting that people aren't happy and points to how close President Money Bags is to Carters approval ratings at this time in his office. In California! Did I already say that? Oh yeah.

That is a very troubling sign.

Imagine what happens if, or depending on your view, when interest rates and inflation start kicking in! Most say that inflation is tame. That may be so. But, the latest look at the misery index seems to indicate inflation is picking up. Here (at the bottom). The red area indicates inflation.

The index is close to 13% now. A far cry from Carters 21% misery index, but we have a couple of years to go yet. The economists assure us that inflation won't hit any time soon. Right?

I just thought it was interesting. Your mileage may vary.

Hippies.

Was driving by local hippie coffeee house (well not me - I'm sleep deprived) and this chick was dancing all alone. It looked like she was being stung by bees.

That is all.

It's Miley's fault.

I love the middle of the night. The calm cool darkness.

But, productive people don't operate in those hours. At least - not many. I often think I'd be a great writer, if I could just write in the middle of the night. Yet I don't for fear I will engage my brain so much, I would never sleep. So, I can't take advantage of it.

Even the power lights on all the electronic devices threaten to stimulate my brain into non sleep. So I try to not even get up out of bed.

They say you can catch up on sleep. Those people are complete liars. I'm sure of it. Or they don't understand real prolonged sleep loss.

I'm in a huge deficit this week. Sucks. Also not helping? That damn Miley Cyrus song. Which I don't even like! Just sayin.

Borderline.

I can't bring myself to put this into my Bad Ass car tag. These Plymouth Prowlers are interesting because you don't see them very often. But, bad ass. Mmmmm. Still, I like them.

Plus for some reason transferring it to jpg wedged it all up. Which is a shame. It has a bunch of extra artifacts. Maybe I should get off my ass and install Lightroom.

Now this is a fine mess.

Update: Exiled former Haitian President Aristide, speaking in South Africa, says he's ready to return to Haiti, but it's unclear when or how – AP about 1 hour ago from BreakingNews Headquarters 1:20am

I hope the power vacuum doesn't happen that way.

---

It was late last year, when Bill Clinton was appointed as the Haitian ambassador that I thought to myself - why is he all of a sudden taking an interest in Haiti? It bugged me for a while, but not enough to really find out the reason. It wasn't important then.

A few weeks ago something pointed me to the reason why. I don't remember now how I found it. It was guilt - the story said. You see, Clinton has a long history with Haiti. Oh. You missed it over endless coverage of cum stained dresses? Me too really. Haiti has always been a spot of the world America forgets about.

Truth be told, I do vaguely have some memories of the time. Yet, so vague I'd just be making shit up if I recounted it from memory.

So when the earthquake hit I felt motivated enough to find the reason. The 1994 US invasion of Haiti. I'm not going to go into the story. You can read about it here. And I would, because the very recent news seems to scrub Clinton and sanitise his involvement. Instead I see reports of how 4 hurricanes are the reason Haiti is so poor. However, in this article from last year Clinton seems to reveal his feelings of guilt.

From CBSnews.

"Bill Clinton grimaced Friday as he recalled the severe embargo he oversaw as president against Haiti's then-brutal regime, a move that destroyed the very economy he is now fighting to revive.

Clinton said the action was necessary to end a junta's brutal and illegal rule. A decade and a half later, the now-U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti believes the country has its best chance yet to recover from a decision whose effects are still felt today.

"I hated it," Clinton told reporters at a private pier he hopes will be used by a revived garment export industry. "But when you have people being burned to death with tires around their neck, that's important too. We had to bring an end to that."

Then-President Clinton inherited limited sanctions aimed at weakening the regime that overthrew democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991. In the spring of 1994, they became an embargo that prevented all goods from entering Haiti except humanitarian supplies, crippling the economy.

An assembly sector that had employed 100,000 workers fell to just 17,000 jobs, according to the U.S. State Department. It has barely recovered since."

So, when I see reports of President Money Bags exclaiming loudly "We are not taking over Haiti". You only have to draw a small line as to why the US is taking (by most reports now) - hardly a leadership role.

I mean, people act as if Haiti is on the other side of the world. Hell, Wolf Blitzer of CNN didn't even know what time zone it was in. I'll try to dredge back up the video. (Here. 5 minutes30 seconds or so in) People float here on rafts it so freakin' close.

So, as Haitians grow more desperate - one wonders what kind of a power vacuum this is going to turn into. It's been a couple of days now, and their own government doesn't seem to have power. Technically I suppose yes, but I've seen tons of video out of that place. I don't see any UN or Haitian officials. So - who is going to take control? I don't think the Haitians have the luxury of someone not taking control.

You know, when I was growing up - the UN helicoptered food into places. So did we. Now everything is bottle-necked at the airport? They know helicopters can land anywhere.

Anyway. This whole thing is just going to be really, really messed up. When I see guys who go into the trenches to report on war start to break down and cry. You know this is going to be messed up.

Wow. Gas has jumped 8 cents a gallon since I filled up at noon. At the same station.