More random thoughts

They are especially random and very fuzzy this morning after a very sleepless night. Actually, after sleeping twelve hours Saturday night (I woke up at 12:30 PM Sunday.) which is unheard of for me, I woke up at 4:30 AM this morning and could not get back to sleep so I got up at 5:30 AM. Now I am working on my third cup of coffee, not to stay awake but to sweep out some of the mental cobwebs if possible.

Oh, just wondering if the religious fanatics who believe in the second coming of Christ would really be that pleased to see him. I somehow doubt that Catholic laity and clergy who deny communion to those wearing rainbow colored sashes would be too pleased with His response to such a matter. They would probably even deny that he was even Jesus since he obviously does not believe in the teachings of the church he supposedly founded. "Get behind thee Satan."

I wonder too if Bush's hole is now deep enough to keep him out of sight come this November. I am not greatly enthused about Kerry at this point but anybody but Bush - PLEASE.

Back to the real world

Or, back to normal. Whichever is applicable. Having just returned from two weeks in Bangkok I am still trying to get back up to speed. There was a ton of mail and this has been complicated by the termination of my mailbox at the end of this month and instituting mail forwarding for the PO box plus the notification all of my vendors, accounts, and correspondents that my snail mail address will change in June. Well, I got through my checks and bank statement in good shape but I still have notify a lot of people about the address thingie.

The other big project will now be to sort through all of the photos and video clips I brought back with me. This includes re-sizing photos for my website but this seems to go much smoother these days with Paint Shop Pro 8 (Jasc).

Now I am worried about a correspondent from Manila who works for an oil company but is stationed in Saudia Arabia. He has been there about two months now and today I learned that there has been an attack on one of the facilities there which resulted in about 15 deaths and two of those were Filipino nationals. Now I don't know what to think. I do have a cell phone number and will try that early Sunday morning PDT which will be evening there. Hopefully I can get through to someone at that time.

I know this...Bush must go. I am not sure Kerry has the vision to carry on but can anyone be worse than Bush?

Oh, before I forget. About a month ago I said I should stop buying books until I have read what I already have. Well, I apparently did not pay attention to my own warning as I bought two books while in Bangkok. Actually, reading would go a lot faster if I weren't so adicted to this computer. Ha!

This is one of the most nervous days of the year for me. Actually, this occurs anytime I am getting ready to go on a journey somewhere. The details of trying to decide what to take with me are always difficult. They shouldn't be however. I am going to a major city (Bangkok) where I can obtain anything that I might have forgotten at home, and if my clothes get dirty, I can use the laundry service at the hotel, so why do I get nervous and worry about not taking enough? Ha! I usually take too much. The most important things are my passport and the airline tickets plus a few phone numbers as well as some other important papers. I just need to pack and forget it but I know that I will be packing and rearranging the suitcase all day. Even now my stomach growls in nervous anticipation.

At least the weather seems to be cooling somewhat although I doubt that my body could tell the difference between 98 and 92 degrees Fahrenheit especially with the same high humidity. Thunderstorms continue on a daily basis so I am taking my umbrella although I don't like the idea of holding onto a lightning rod during en electrical storm.

This time I will be going through Taipei which makes the second leg of the journey a bit shorter than the Tokyo to Bangkok run. The Taipei airport, however, is less interesting than the one in Narita/Tokyo. In fact, the gate area is a sterile concrete box with nothing but chairs and the counter for airline employees. There are one or two vending machines which is OK if you have coins of the Taiwanese New Dollar variety.
Last time coming through Narita, on the other hand, I found a small restaurant that accepted U.S. Dollars in addition to Yen. That was great.

I doubt that I will have time to post anything on these pages during the next two weeks, but who knows. I may or may not as circumstances and/or my mood dictate.

STOP THE WORLD, I WANT TO GET OFF


Actually, since I am now retired and have so much time on my hands, maybe I can give Larry, Curly, and Moe a hand in helping to force Democracy down the throats of the Iraqi people. My god, how naive can these clowns in Washinton be? Iraq does not have a tradition of Democracy and they think that this war is going to convince them that it would be a better choice?? Give me a break!

Today someone told me that God must love stupid people as he made so many. Well, three biggest of them reside in the nation's capital. If it weren't for oil we would not be there and no amount of lies or whatever from that bunch will convince me otherwise.

The really scary thing however was a talk I had a short time ago with a fellow liberal who said he cannot vote for Kerry. I hope he votes for someone other than Bush as a "None of the above" approach would be a vote for Bush in what will be a close election.

What is there to write about? Well, that is a good question. World and national news is sooooo depressing these days with those three clowns Moe, Larry, & Curly, oops, I meant Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld in Washington. How silly of me to get the six of them confused! Tsk - tsk. Unfortunately this is not a comedy. If it is it's the most perverse one of my lifetime. One can only hope that some good will come out of this mess by making the election of somebody other than Bush possible.

Well, this sure isn't Kosher...

" A California woman claimed she swallowed a live bullet and bit into a second round while eating a hotdog, and says she has the X-rays to prove it. Police said on Thursday they were investigating the bizarre incident the 31-year-old woman said happened at a Costco store in Irvine, California, about 47 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

"She said she had swallowed one bullet and felt another in her mouth," Irvine police Lt. Jeff Love said. "She showed us the bullet and we took it as evidence. We had them cut up all the other hot dogs and found nothing in the buns." A spokesman for Seattle-based Costco Wholesale Corp. COST.O> said the company had no comment on the incident, which occurred on Sunday and was still being investigated.

The woman showed local television news an X-ray of her stomach with a bullet lodged in it.

Love said the Hebrew National brand hotdogs served at Costco were prepared under Kosher laws with a high standard of cleanliness, and were X-rayed before leaving the factory.

He said it appeared "highly unlikely" that a hot dog would leave the factory with an undetected bullet in it."

Ouch...it's a wonder she didn't break a tooth on that one.

Then we have the case of man biting dog...

"A man fleeing police in the South African city of Durban bit the dog and police officer ordered to apprehend him, police said on Friday.
"The guy actually bit the dog... He was stupid because those dogs are trained not to let go," Superintendent Danelia Veldhuizen of Durban police told Reuters.

The man ran from a house where he is accused of raping a young mother at knife-point on Thursday. The police dog unit was alerted to give chase. The man is expected to be charged with rape and robbery.

Veldhuizen said the man bit the policeman's finger right through to the bone, but the dog was fine."

"The effort to stabilize Iraq is out of control. It's time to face the facts squarely, and recognize that America, acting alone, is no longer capable of reaching the hearts and minds of Iraqis. We've got to transfer management authority over Iraq to the United Nations, to enable a real transition to peaceful Iraqi self-rule."

If you agree with the above statement and want to look into the matter a little more, go to Move On for further information.

Beware of the furniture


Funny story tonight about Ikea at The Onion. Where do these people get their stories??

Time Travel?


No wonder the government is all screwed up. My new digital kitchen clock which "phones home" to a government run radio station which continually broadcasts the date and time, really startled me this morning. Whereas I went to bed on Monday night May 3, 2004, I woke up on Sat. Jan. 6, 2002. Huh? Well, that is what the clock said and I had not touched it. I wonder if this apartment has ghosts or was that government clock really that far off. If so, no wonder things are all messed up.

Bush sees a brighter future in Irag? Good grief, what drug is he on? This only points out so well how deluded this man is!

I must simply stop buying books until I have read what I already have. Last night on the way to the symphony I bought The Gospel of Thomas (John Dart & Ray Riegert) and The Gnostic Gospels (Elaine Pagels). The Gospel of Thomas will probably be a quick read however I still am only halfway through The Messianic Legacy (Michael Baigent, Richard Leight & Henry Lincoln). In the world of fiction I still have not started Digital Fortress (Dan Brown) or Deception Point (Dan Brown). These two should be quick reads however. Dan's Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons were. I finally finished Holy Blood, Holy Grail which is now on loan to a friend.

Then there are weird stories in the news such as this one.


MIAMI (Reuters) - An Oklahoma woman drove around for days with her mother's decomposing body in the passenger seat of her car, Florida investigators said on Thursday.
Sheriff's deputies found the woman's body on Tuesday in a car parked outside a Wal-Mart store in the northeast Florida city of Palm Coast. The medical examiner ruled the 65-year-old woman had died of natural causes at least five days earlier.

The woman's daughter, in her mid-30s, was inside the 24-hour store, where she had been shopping since the night before. She was incoherent and unable to give a clear account of her journey to Florida, Flagler County Sheriff's investigators said.

Police went to investigate when other shoppers complained about the odor coming from the parked car.

They traced the auto registration and pieced together details of the trip from receipts found in the car.

The women had lived together in Covington, Oklahoma, and left there several weeks ago. They traveled through Texas and North Carolina on the 1,300-mile trip to Florida, the investigators said. It was not clear if the mother died at a stop-off or in the car.

The daughter was hospitalized for psychiatric examination. No charges were filed because the mother's death was from natural causes. No further details were available.

Trouble in Paradise


I am both saddened and angered by the violence in southern Thailand because some militant Muslims want a separate state. Why now? I do not know if they have been in the minority or the majority in the three provinces effected but what was wrong with things there that they could not be addressed by the national government, or if they really disliked it there so much, why didn't they just move to Malaysia which is right next door and is a Muslim country. Now some rebels are warning tourists to stay away from Krabi and Phuket. These popular tourists destinations are further north and could suffer a major financial loss if things get out of hand in the south. I will be in the country in a few weeks and am not worried especially since I will be in the central and northern parts of the country but still it is worrisome for the welfare of the whole country.


Other troubles: As I walk around my neighborhood in the Nob Hill area and on down to Polk Gulch I am disturbed by the increasing amount graffiti present on so many buildings. I personally would like to dump a gallon of the same color paint on a perpetrator of these acts of vandalism if they could be caught but I guess these things happen late at night when most honest folks are at home and asleep.

Then there is the old woman who lives on Pine Street between Hyde and Leavenworth who rolls around a small piece of luggage containing plastic bags of bread crumbs which she leaves in the gutters to feed the pigeons. As a result the west end of her block has become a mess with pigeon droppings galore as has the west side of Hyde Street between California and Pine. She even dumped a bunch of these bread crumbs in the Muni bus stop there one day and stood there blocking bus access to it until her beloved pigeons had eaten most everything. She is a nut case for sure. This is against the law so I would love to get a picture of her doing this so I could submit it to the proper authorities.

I guess for these and many other reasons it is always so pleasant to visit downtown San Jose where the streets are clean and there aren't any derelicts passed out on the sidewalks beside their stolen shopping carts full of vermin and other assorted crap.

GO RED SOX

Wo to the Giants

Two teams going in opposite directions. Also, whoever predicted a NL-West three-way race between the Dodgers, Giants, and Diamondbacks sure screwed up on that one. Right now it appears to be a two way race between the Dodgers and the Padres. Help, I need an Alka Seltzer, or another drink. Ha!

Six or seven more dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq each day. How much longer will this go on and what will it accomplish?

Item, item, whose gotta item...


Definitely cooler today. That is good. Now I will feel like doing something instead of being a lemonade swilling couch potato. Ha!

Well, the politcal campaigns go on and on and on and on. I'm not sure who started it and I don't care but I would like to hear some specifics from both major candidates about how to fix some of this countries problems. Since they are not talking about those things I can only assume that neither Kerry nor Bush have a clue so once again it will come down to the lesser of two evils in November and for me that is Kerry.

The needless deaths of 700+ U.S. Servicemen and women makes it impossible for me to vote for Bush. Also it is very disgusting to witness how these moral cowards who are now in power keep trying to hide their record of ineptitude behind a smokescreen of misinformation and vicious attacks on anyone with the courage to proclaim the truth. Sometimes I wonder if I could volunteer to be the first man on Mars.

Don't laugh too loudly


I have heard of loud snoring that has caused problems but never laughter as in this case from Berlin.

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"A German took his female neighbor to court for laughing too loudly. But she had the last laugh -- the judge threw out the case, saying Germany could not ban laughter, newspapers reported on Tuesday.
Unemployed Bernd F., 52, complained to magistrates that 47-year-old Barbara M. kept him awake with over four hours of loud laughter one evening as she enjoyed a meal with eight friends in her Berlin apartment above his, Bild daily said.

The judge dismissed the complaint of disturbing the peace, saying the woman had not broken any noise restrictions. "Laughter is a general sound of life. It will not be banned," he said. "

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Record temperatures for April here with 91F in SF yesterday. That is not a city record however. The hotest I have experienced here was one Sunday afternoon in August in the mid-eighties while sitting in the sun at Stern Grove for three hours at a concert. I knew it was hot but had no idea (thank god) until I returned to the car to learn that the official high for that day was 103F. Yikes!!!!!!

Our miserable Giants are now in the cellar. I don't think things will get any better, or if the team suddenly perks up, it will be too late. They need to spend some money for good players but they have been cutting the budget lately so I doubt that will happen. Maybe after Bonds retires they will be able to afford more and better players. This reminds we of when I was a kid in Boston and about the only player of worth on the Red Sox was Ted Williams. Well, one very good player does not a baseball team make.

The Bush/Blair team is the most stubborn two I have ever seen. At least here we have a presidential election scheduled this November although there is a significant portion of the population who believes Bush or feels that he is the better of the two (vs. Kerry) in a crisis. This is scary!

All quiet here in the City by the Bay. Same sex marriages are on hold pending a review of the situation by the State Supreme Court so there are no long lines at City Hall or protests by right wing fundamentalists although there was a march by a conglomeration of conservative church groups out somewhere in the avenues last weekend. Marching in those neighborhoods was like preaching to the choir.

Some of my friends are going to hate me (again) as I terminate my post office box at the end of May and revert back to my street address for snail-mail. I started renting the box a few years ago when this neighborhood became the victim of somebody breaking into mailboxes. Ours weren't that good in the first place and by the time he was finished with them, several were unusable. Fortunately they caught him so that ended that. In the meantime I started renting the post office box at a substation near my office. That was convenient while I was still working but now that I have retired, I don't always enjoy taking the time to go down to the financial district just for mail. Also, this building has installed new mailboxes inside the security gate so we are in good shape here now for mail deliveries. So this will be a way to cut my budget a little and have the mail delivered here once again.

Not too much to write about (is there ever) so I will sign off for now. I need something wet and cold to drink also.

Stupid ideas


#1: The Market Street Railway Association is supporting and has convinced Muni officials to run the historic trolleys all the way from Fisherman's Wharf to SBC Park and maybe even part way down the new Third Street line when it opens thus mixing these older, slower, and lighter weight trolleys with the new, faster, and heavy weight Breda LRVs. Although it was operator error that caused the crash a few months ago on the outer part of the J-line, we all saw what would happen to a PCC trolley when rammed by a Breda LRV. To mix the two between Folsom Street and SBC Park is crazy. Also, I have heard from a correspondent in Melbourne that they tried something like that in that city and it did not work there due to too many accidents. Well I guess it is time to write to the MSR with copies of the letter going to the Muni General Manager and to Mayor Newsom.

#2: The plans for an organ pavilion on a plaza created by the Embarcadero Roadway and trolley line projects are still in the works. This very noisy location is bordered by Steuart Street on the west, Justin Herman Plaza on the north, the Embarcadero Roadway and trolley line on the east, and Donn Chee Way, a private right-of-way on the south for the F-line access to Fisherman's Wharf. The pipe organ which used to be housed in the Civic Auditorium is planned for the outdoor pavalion and would probably resemble the Spreckle's Pavilion in Balboa Park in San Diego. That site has one huge advantage over the SF location in that the park is a much quieter environment. The other problem, which cannot be overcome, is that a pipe organ needs to be inside a building in order for all of its many voices to be heard properly. Outdoors the quieter pipes would be drowned out by ambient noises forcing the organist to play loud and louder. All subtlety of intonation would be completely lost which it is in the quieter Balboa Park in San Diego. The real kicker in this is that the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists is behind this project and they, of all people, should know better than to do something like this. I think it is great that the historic organ was saved and refurbished but let's find a decent home for it. Actually, the city missed a golden opportunity by not putting it on the upper level of the nave of the restored Ferry Building. There are now offices on both ends of the building but what a glorious place for weekend concerts there in that very vibrant atmosphere. Although this organ is not terribly big, the Wannamaker Department store installation comes to mind when I think of public spaces and organs. Once again the city that prides itself as the "City that knows how", doesn't, and it doesn't even have a clue as to what is going on.

I'll make an exception here.


I don't usually approve of pranks that some radio stations pull but this one took a bit of doing and since it was the "bad guy" who was upset, I find this somewhat humorous.

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A radio station that crank-called Cuban President Fidel Castro and broadcast the recording should be fined $4,000, the Federal Communications Commission said.

The Spanish-speaking hosts of "The Morning High Jinks" used snippets of an earlier prank involving Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to move the call from a receptionist up the chain to Castro in a five-minute broadcast June 17.

The hosts of the show on WXDJ-FM, Joe Ferrero and Enrique Santos, fed pleasantries to Castro before breaking in and calling him an assassin. The conversation ended after Castro denounced the callers with a stream of vulgarities.

The FCC concluded Friday that the station should be fined for the broadcast. It rejected the station's claim that a rule requiring people to be notified before their voices are used does not apply to people in Cuba.

Payment of the fine or a request for cancellation or reduction is required within 30 days.

It was unclear whether the station had been fined for the prank involving Chavez five months before.

There was no answer at the station's business line Saturday, and a call to the station's Washington attorney was not immediately returned.

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Of course, this tends to point out how technology can be used to fool someone and it makes me wonder if similar tactics could be used to upset internal security in this country. Now that is scary.

What next?


That is a rhetorical question. I am thinking outloud here. It was a beautiful day and since I did not feel like suffering through five hours of faulty Internet reception from WQXR-FM. I like Gotterdammerung too much to suffer static and minute interruptions for that long, so, I went out to the Japan Center complex for the Cherry Blossom Festival. That turned out to be a good decision except that I forgot to take my camera. I got to see and here SF Taiko Dojo which I had feared I wouldn't for some reason. Anyway I watched them and a purification ceremony performed by Buddhist Monks and I a Teriyaki Burger for lunch. By the way, the scenery was beautiful on this very warm day. So what next? I have been asking myself that ever since I returned home. Should I do something else? Go out tonight? Resume with my slide scanning project? What? Well, as it has turned out, none of the above. [clunk!]

YOU'RE FIRED

The whole bunch of you. Starting with top front office management down to Felipe Alou. The Giants are miserable and someone needs to be called on the carpet for this disastrous showing in the young 2004 season. I have never seen so many missed opportunities to score and win as I have seen during the past two weeks. I have never seen so many Giant players hitting into double-plays as I have seen during the past two weeks. This ain't major league baseball. This is bush league baseball which makes me wonder if George has anything to do with this miserable showing. After all, he hates the Bay Area.