Today's Top 5

1. In case you missed it, I got engaged to the Super Hot Irish Girlfriend. Scroll down a bit for deets.

2. It's Opening Day! Baseball season is upon us! And the Giants are already down, 3-0 in the 2nd inning!

3. As we know, the start of baseball season coincides with the start of Outdoor Drinking Season.

Ahhh, Zeitgeist. We shall see each other soon.

4. Drop-off laundry service. I used to be at laundry's mercy. Now laundry serves me, ever since I started dropping it off. I figure it costs about $5 more per week. Is it worth $5 not to schlep my laundry down to the laundromat and sit there waiting for it? Oh yes. Yes, yes yes. If you're still doing your own laundry, you probably think Sylvia Browne is really psychic and eat at Red Lobster.

5. Having the day off work for Cesar Chavez Day. Thanks, California taxpayers!

I'm like totally engaged

Short version: Asked Super Hot Irish Girlfriend to marry me. She said yes. Don't worry, there's no Green Card motivation or anything; she already has dual citizenship.

Long version:

Me and the S.H.I.G. drove up to Napa Saturday morning. We were staying at Silverado Resort, which is like a collection of condos that appear to have been decorated by your grandmother. Check out this furniture that was in our condo:

Hideous, huh? Looks like something Vintage Microwave would be all over. But we're not here for the furniture, right?

So we hit a few wineries - Peju, which was OK, I guess, and then Cakebread, which was really good, I thought. They had a Reserve Chardonnay that was excellent, but I forgot by the time the tasting was over and bought the Sauvignon Blanc instead.

Got a bite to eat and then hit up Domaine Carneros. I had the sparkling wines flight and really liked the Vintage Brut, and I don't usually like sparkling wine at all. So S.H.I.G. bought a bottle of that. THIS IS FORESHADOWING.

Go back to the resort, open the bottle of champagne (or I guess you're not allowed to call it that - it's "sparkling wine," sorry). So we're sitting around Grandma's condo and I'm trying to get my nerve up. And I realize that we're almost out of champagne and it would suck to propose right when we ran out of champagne. (Or sparkling wine, sorry). So I turn the TV off (slick, huh?) and I kneeled down in front of her and she totally saw it coming. She goes "No! Awkward! Awkward!" and started laughing. But I busted out the ring and said, "Will you marry me?" and she burst into tears and said "Yes."

HERE'S THE VISUAL PROOF:

I know, right? Any bigger and she's need a sling to hold her arm up. That's how I roll.

Oh, and today on the drive from Napa to Petaluma (where we stopped for breakfast and overheard this horrifying story, but I'll get to that another time), we drove right into the Windows start-up screen.

And that's how I came to be engaged.

The homeless report

Today I was standing at the corner of Mission and Spear when a homeless guy pushing a cart full of bottles and cans came towards the trash can next to which I stood. (You can see the actual trash can in the pic - look lower left.) As he got closer, he said to me, "Are you still masturbating? You know that sin's gonna keep chasing you." So I guess I'm fucked!

There's another homeless guy I see every day in Civic Center Plaza. Or at least I assume he's homeless. He shows up every day and sits by the grass, lights incense, and sometimes bangs on a cowbell or something that sounds like a cowbell. I assume he's homeless because he asked me for 25 cents once. He's there like all day, every day. You know what he made me realize? Being homeless, apart from all the problems you'd expect, is probably fucking boring. I can't imagine sitting out there all day with no Internet or TV or even a book.

Today in the news

1. Hilary's whole "Oh, right, I wasn't actually under sniper fire" thing

a.k.a. The next total fucking non-issue that has been completely seized upon and turned into a huge story and meanwhile we don't even know how she's going to fund universal health care or what her position on gun control is, even though those are actual fucking issues.

Yes, she obviously wasn't coming under withering enemy fire when she got off the plane in Bosnia and played pattycake with an 8-year-old and then had a picnic on the tarmac. Oh whoops. But - and this is coming from an Obama man - who the fuck cares? I just generally assume that politicians are lying about 60% of the time, so I fail to see how this should come as a surprise to anyone. Anyway, she lived in DC for 8 years, so she was basically in gunfire range at all times.

2. The Matches' creepy old guy leader

Joel Selvin (who is a whole 'nother story I'll address at a later juncture) writes about this semi-creepy old guy who seems to be the creative and everything else force behind The Matches, a band from Oakland composed of fairly recent high-school grads. The article explains that he "co-writes all the songs with Matches front man Shawn Harris, produces the band's CDs, directs the videos and basically participates in every creative decision the band makes, down to what to wear or where to take a photograph for a newspaper article."

Now, I've heard some Matches songs and liked them, and I'm all for the kids making the rock music, but isn't it just sort of.... I don't know, un-rock to have a svengali? It's just the kind of thing I associate with boy bands, not bands that, at one point, called themselves "punk." I mean, he tells them what to wear?

3. God finally listened to my prayers

This is so fucking creepy

This is a new quadriped robot under development by some company obviously fueled by Defense Department money. It's explained better in this article at Gizmodo.



Isn't that just the fucking creepiest thing you've ever seen? I mean, it looks like a real live animal of some kind. The kind that Hieronymous Bosch was afraid of, that's what kind. It doesn't need to actually shoot bullets out of its eyes or explode on contact; just drop a bunch of them anywhere near your enemies and they will run in abject terror. Jesus.

Today's Top 5

1. The new Chester Cheetah

Remember how Chester Cheetah used to be kind of a spaz? He's changed.




Don't you love the accent?

2. "Date with Ikea" by Pavement

3. Valley Tavern

What's not to like about this solid neighborhood bar? Nothing, that's what.

4. Super Hot Irish Girlfriend

NOTE this list is not in any particular order.

5. My new car

New to me, anyway. It's a 1996 Jeep Cherokee. I kind of love it.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeet.

Eagle rays are the new spinach!

This is so fucked up:

MIAMI (Reuters) - An eagle ray leaped onto a boat off the Florida Keys on Thursday and stabbed a woman with its barb, knocking her to the deck and killing her, a Florida wildlife investigator said.

"It's a bizarre accident," said Jorge Pino, an agent with the Flnoorida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The woman and her family were aboard a boat in the Atlantic
Ocean, off the city of Marathon in the Florida Keys, he said.
"A large ray jumped out of the water and collided with the victim and somehow the barb penetrated some part of her body, which caused her to fall back and hit her head on some portion of the vessel," Pino said. "We don't know exactly which one of those things caused her death."

Local media said the animal's barb had impaled the woman through the neck.

Eagle rays are fucking fed up and they're not taking any more crap. Got it?

Today in the News

1. The whole Obama - Rev. Jeremiah Wright thing

OK, let's start with the fundamentals. This Wright guy has obviously said some stuff that sounds completely incendiary to white people but which (I suspect, not being black) aren't that big a deal to black people. I mean, the idea that the whole country is against you - where could blacks have gotten that idea? I can't believe I'm about to type these words, but I think Mike Huckabee - Mike Huckabee! - pretty much nailed it:

And one other thing I think we've got to remember: As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, "That's a terrible statement," I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I'm going to be probably the only conservative in America who's going to say
something like this, but I'm just telling you: We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, "You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate
waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may
have had a more, more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

Holy shit. Did a Republican just say that? Mike Huckabee, you make sense to me. Now if you'd just stop saying that we should amend the Constitution to make it legal to stone witches, I'd be on board with you.

2. Barry Bonds - victim of collusion?

The MLB players' union is investigating why no team wants to hire Bonds this season and darkly hints that they're colluding against him. Oh, you lovable goofballs! It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that he's an out-of-shape 43-year-old ex-steroid junkie who can't field his position for shit and is pretty much universally loathed by everyone outside the city limits of San Francisco, could it? Nope, gotta be collusion. Oh Christ.

3. The Bear Stearns bailout

This is boring and I don't understand it, so fuck it.

So that worked out well

Today is the 5th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. I know this because there are protests all over my town, many of them no doubt featuring the giant puppet heads that somehow seem to invariably materialize whenever more than 10 hippies get together to get mad about something. Because, you know, the military-industrial complex is all, "Oh fuck! They deployed the giant puppets! Who will save us now?"

Back to the war. According to the latest figures, this criminally stupid enterprise will end up costing us about $3 trillion dollars, which is enough to give every man, woman, and child in America their own iPhone and probably a Garvin navgiation system to boot. We didn't need to invade Iraq; for $3 trillion, we could have just bought the fucking country and been done with it.

So my thought for the day is: "Thanks a fucking bunch, Senor Bush, for making the world safe for Applebee's and reruns of Two and a Half Men. Great job!"

Today's Top 5

1. My Super Hot Irish girlfriend

I know it's St. Patrick's Day and everything, but every day is Irish Day at my house, since I have a super hot Irish girlfriend. She left the old country at 19 and endured a voyage across the ocean fraught with many hardships to come to America. Well, probably the only hardship was the sky waitress not bringing the little bottles of Skyy around fast enough, but you get the idea. So I salute you, Super Hot Irish Girlfriend.

2. Top Chef

I love Top Chef and I'm not sure why. But I'm glad it's back.

3. Morningstar Farms Tomato & Basil Pizza Burgers

Holy crap, these are good. Cook one up and melt some mozzarella cheese on top and maybe put it on some focaccia and JESUS you will be going "French Laundry, my ass. Your food tastes like third-rate crap next to my Morningstar Farms Tomato & Basil Pizza Burger."

4. Harp

Again, I'm not trying to pimp the St. Patrick's Day thing too much.

I just really, really like Harp a lot.

5. Baseball season starts in like 3 weeks.

I'm so sick of SXSW

Look! It's a show at SXSW in Austin! Look at us! Aren't we cool!

Yeah.

Listen, I don't know about you, but I am fucking sick of hearing about South by Southwest. You can't turn on your favorite indie/alt/whatever Interwebs news source this week without reading about WHAT! A! FABULOUS! TIME! we're having at SXSW this year. HEY! I just drank a Lone Star with the sweaty guy from Ratatat! Yay! Go me!

I have to admit, it's because I'm sort of insanely jealous. OF COURSE I want to hang out at Emo's with the Redwalls and talk about what possibly could have happened to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. OF COURSE I want to bump into Chuck Klosterman at my Days Inn pool. But I'm not there, obviously.