Sorry for the low-tech rerouting, but: 

If you reached this page because of a link to a numbered item that is no longer on my main page, you can get to it by adding "#" and the number -- e.g. "#1197" -- to the end of the URL above.

Strange de Joel is back. On the Supreme Court members' qualifications to determine whether greenhouse gases count as air pollutants, he notes that they have long experience of hot air, and imagines them saying, "I know it when I smell it."

11/8/06, 12:43 p.m. (Link here)

Well, Chris Daly now seems likely to keep his seat as District Six San Francisco Supervisor by a margin of something like 10%. The business/police/yuppie challenger thought he could win with expensive advertising and a flimsy ground operation, and with a toxic message of contempt and dislike for the neighbors and neighborhoods in his own district. Turns out a lot of those neighbors were offended into working and voting for Chris.

11/7/06, 11:13 p.m. (Link here)

little darling, i think the ice is slowly melting...

11/5/06, 9:00 p.m. (Link here)

It's quite a Sheherazade story, the way The Simpsons keep going on Fox. How the hell, for example, do they get away with this? (This is unoriginally via Atrios, but really, it's worth seeing.)

11/5/06, 3:37 p.m. (Link here)

Once in a while something encouraging happens. On the Sunday before Election Day, front page center, the LA Times has published its article on the mistreatment of some Mexican guest workers who had a very tough time in Tulelake, California earlier this fall (alternate link to the article here). It happens I was doing research for a book project in that area for a few days in October. I met some of the same people, heard some of the same upsetting stories from them and saw some of their problems directly. Any time you have firsthand knowledge about the subject of a newspaper feature you find some details have been left out, but in this article what does appear does ring true. Read it especially if you think -- as I did at first -- that legal guest workers have any more bargaining power than illicit border crossers. Actually it turns out people who come in on our current H-2A visa program still have to be afraid to call in the labor standards authorities, because their right to remain in the country is tied to their continued work for an employer who can send them home if they complain. As the article says, it's a system that "has elements of un-free labor."

11/4/06, 12:39 a.m. (Link here)

11/2/06, 2:14 p.m. (Link here)

Try to avoid reading the rest of this aimlessly icky SF Weekly article about supervisorial candidate Rob Black, but do count your way down to Paragraph 16, which says this:

The trick to getting inside the new doorman-guarded condo towers, Black explained, is to call real estate agents who are pro-business (all of them) and get them to cough up the names of owners of $1 million condominiums. Telephone the condo-residents with a spiel about the politics of inoffensiveness. Ask them to post notes on their hall-mates' doors inviting them to a "neighborhood party." Black attends the 20-person party, works the room with more pro-public decorum shtick, gets four more parties up and running, attends those, until when I met him last week, he'd just come from attending several of these condo-fests, this after having attended a hundred or so during the previous few months.

There are of course condo folks who live here because they like the neighborhood, who are willing to make friends with existing neighbors. But there seems to be an elevated upper crust who just don't walk around their new neighborhood at ground level, period. They even avoid eye contact with mere pedestrians like us while they're waiting in their SUVs or convertibles for their automatic garage doors to open. We only hear them on their balconies, shouting about business deals into their cell phones -- or, in the case of one particular neighbor, shouting drunkenly at some visiting women (who may or may not have been paid) to take their clothes off for photographs. (Past midnight on a week night. I'm not kidding.) Not being pedestrians themselves, they're able to take someone else's word that it's simply impossible, my dear, for decent people to walk on the downtown sidewalks. Funny how the rest of us manage.

11/2/06, 12:58 p.m. (Link here)

"Rainbows. Deadly rainbows."

The "Pearls Before Swine" strip gets the essence of a popular political two-step.

10/30/06, 8:01 p.m. (Link here)

"District Six Is Not For Sale": Jim Meko, writing in Fog City Journal, knocks it out of the park.

10/30/06, 7:07 p.m. (Link here)

Favor requested:

I'm not a MySpace subscriber, so could someone please let me know why lots of visitors are suddenly clicking over here from a MySpace link? Thanks.

[UPDATE: Mystery solved, it's Loin's Mouth folks. Rachel's been very nice about this conversation, so it's hard to say that parts of the magazine just bug me. Parts are laughing at the poorer TL neighbors, not with them. Parts are sympathetic, but in a bemused-slummer tone. And then parts are really about the neighborhood. Eh, don't trust my view, go see what you think.]

10/30/06, 1:13 p.m. (Link here)

A few days ago I found a publication called The Loin's Mouth in the BrainWash laundromat/cafe for the first time ever, saw it had a mainly favorable interview with supervisorial candidate Rob Black, and wondered in detail here whether it was a pro-Black campaign effort.

So Rachel Mills, editor of the paper and author of the Black writeup, wrote back to say no, not really. By her kind permission I've attached her note below. Note the reference to Maxon Crumb as author of this drawing. I think he must be the famous Tenderloin resident Max Crumb, brother of R.

Hi! Editor of the Loin's Mouth here. I did a google search this morning for "The Loin's Mouth" just to see what would come up and I came across http://home.pacbell.net/mabjo/martha.html where there were questions about how our paper came to be at Brainwash, who put the Rob Black sticker on there, etc. Just so there's no confusion, the paper is not supposed to specifically endorse Rob Black. We put the sticker on there ourselves as a courtesy because in my article I'd mentioned the crazy person who sent me that email I referred to at the beginning of the interview twice, but I hadn't mentioned Rob's website once. (Note that the sticker does not say "Vote for Rob Black" even if the paper is perhaps slanted in his favor.) The caption that says "Chris Daly and His Constituents" was actually a miscommunication between the person who sent me the illustration on behalf of Maxon Crumb (the artist of both that illustration and the one on the cover, signed "Joe Maximus the 1st"). Apparently that was not necessarily supposed to be the caption but hey! what are you gonna do, right? I hear through the grapevine that Maxon was okay with it in the end anyway, which was of far greater concern to me when the mistake was first pointed out (did not want to piss off the artist!) As for the rant against Chris Daly on the adjacent page, this is written as credited by Colin Hussey (an avid Black supporter) and his views are not necessarily endorsed by the paper as a whole--although he has free reign to say whatever he wants as long as it has something to do with District 6 and/or our neighborhood. Although, I think if you really look at what he's saying, his point is not so much that he thinks Daly is a bad guy--just that his talents might better serve the community if perhaps they were channeled into a different arena. (Anyway, that's his opinion and people are welcome to agree or disagree with him as they see fit.) As for who printed them, we printed these ourselves with money out of our own pockets. Several of our contributors live near Brainwash, which is why we decided to circulate them there (Plus, I used to live in SOMA right around the corner, so I still hang out at Brainwash or at other places in the vicinity pretty much all the time.)

Anyway, I hope that answers your questions! Our main motivation is to put out an entertaining product--not to make some grand political statement or whatever. The rest of the paper has pretty much nothing to do with the District 6 elections. We recognize that not everyone will agree with the views expressed in this particular issue, but unfortunately, that's just the way it goes! Over all, we've gotten excellent feedback. Ironically, if that weirdo had never sent me that email, I never would have interviewed Rob at all. I would have written a story about our adventures bar hopping at various Tenderloin pubs.

Oh yeah, Colin took that photo of the "Dump Daly" sign in the middle of his page, so whoever posted it on that other website most likely got it from Colin.

10/27/06, 9:06 p.m. (Link here)

This is a picture of my street. My pretty, ordinary, quiet little street. Not remarkable except that it's in San Francisco District Six, where outside money men are campaigning against our incumbent supervisor by trying to convince those of us who live and vote here that (1) we live in a hellhole saturated with human waste, and (2) it's the fault, not of the mayor, the police department, or the Department of Public Works, but of our local county supervisor, who they simultaneously criticize for demanding better service from all of the above.

10/26/06, 10:56 a.m. (Link here)

Something cheerful for a change: in discussion on LeftinSF (see below) a neighbor I've never met mentioned that our long-awaited South of Market community park will be opening tomorrow afternoon, 3-5 p.m., with barbecue and activities. Rec and Park made a very nice poster for the event which they were kind enough to forward here for posting. I only wish they had circulated the announcement more widely, as I only heard about the event today by accident and even then couldn't find any mention of it online.

[MORE: Weird further development is, I was inclined to guess there were anti-Daly reasons for not publicizing the event but the LeftinSF commenter states the reasons were pro-Daly. Good grief, whatever the politics are, I think that if our public officials schedule a free public event for a new public park they should tell the public about it.]

10/26/06, 1:12 a.m. (Link here)

OK, out-of-towners please forgive me, but I have to post something here about our local District Six supervisorial election, in which incumbent Chris Daly is facing a polymorphous assault of well-funded negative campaigning.

Earlier I posted this item on the LeftInSF blog about a discovery we made tonight at the BrainWash laundromat/cafe of a publication never before seen there called "The Loin's Mouth." I'm posting further here in order to be able to show images of the publication.

First, the publication includes a rant against Chris Daly that is illustrated with a black and white version (close-up here) of this photo, which was one of those posted earlier to Flickr by "rkchamberlain2" using the "safasoma" tag recommended by the "safasoma" Web site. On the facing page, we find this charming drawing, captioned "Chris Daly and his Constituents."

Then there's a four-page interview with Daly's strongest challenger, Rob Black. It's on pages 16...17...18... and 19. At the very end of the interview on page 19 there's a little white sticker inviting the reader to look up the Web site of Rob Black. (Close-up image here.)

I'm no expert on whether this "Loin's Mouth" publication ought to be classified as a campaign mailer or an ordinary newspaper, and probably for the sake of free speech rights it ought to be classified as an ordinary newspaper -- but I'd still be interested to know who pasted in those little white stickers and trucked an armload of this Tenderloin-oriented magazine down to BrainWash in the South of Market neighborhood a few days before our municipal election.

10/25/06, 6:31 p.m. (Link here)

Well, I don't quite know what to make of this Randy Shaw rant about our local Sister Bernie Galvin Apartments, but today I ran into a guy who just moved in there and he loves it. For $561 a month he says he's getting slate floors and a private kitchen with four-burner stove. I don't think I've ever seen this man happy before and today he was thrilled.

10/24/06, 9:35 p.m. (Link here)

My personal nomination for most tin-eared sentence of the week goes to Utah's Office of Ethnic Affairs for this gem:

"Ethnic people have been a part of Utah's culture since pioneers arrived."

10/7/06, 6:17 p.m. (Link here)

Civic participation pays off

I've just found this statement from our local Ethics Commission saying independent expenditures against our incumbent county supervisor, Chris Daly, have risen so high that they're lifting the spending cap on Daly's ability to respond. The statement says in part:

There have been mass mailings, signage, door hangars [sic], polls, web sites, numerous handouts and fliers, windshield drops – at least one with first-class return postage affixed, staff and legal costs, independent printing and other expenses.

10/6/06, 2:18 p.m. (Link here)

The Ninth Circuit says dangerous working conditions in prison labor can contitute "cruel and unusual punishment." Which raises an interesting question: should the unions be advocating for prisoners in their capacity as industrial employees?

10/5/06, 2:44 p.m. (Link here)

To the many visitors who have lately arrived via the Google Images search "moldy tomato," here's the post you want. Scroll down past the cat picture to see a photo of a cherry tomato that grew itself a hairdo like Don King's.

Now, would you folks mind explaining why you're looking for pictures of moldy tomatoes? Please send your reasons to bridegam[at]pacbell.net . [LATER: On second thought, never mind, I'd rather not know.]

10/4/06, 9:47 a.m. (Link here)

The U.S. Constitution And Fascinating Facts About It is a sweet and useful little book. It's available with bulk-order discounts. There's even an option to customize the foreword in orders of 2,000 copies or more. I know I can think of some people who could use copies of this book. Can you?

10/3/06, 5:20 p.m. (Link here)

A man and his cat:

9/23/06, 2:13 p.m. (Link here)

This does not sound like a joke. (If that link doesn't get you to a purported quote from a Tony Snow briefing, see here.) If it isn't a joke or a fabrication, then the White House spokesman doesn't believe in judicial review.

9/22/06, 4:11 p.m. (Link here)

Omelas

Some necessary things to say.

9/22/06, 12:44 p.m. (Link here)

Two old married people while parking a car on Howard Street, South of Market, San Francisco:

"Is that place new across the street? Maybe it's a gallery. It says 'Soap Gallery.' I see art on walls but then they've got shower curtains in there. What are they doing? Art? bathing?"
"Maybe it's conceptual."
"Oh, I'm sure it's consensual, but what are they doing?"

9/21/06, 2:46 p.m. (Link here)

Torture is wrong. Pretending torture can be defined out of existence with phoney language is wrong. Secret prisons are wrong. Habeas corpus is the essential condition for the rule of law. Why is it even necessary to say these things?

9/19/06, 2:51 p.m. (Link here)

Strange de Joel reads a headline: "Bush Says U.S. Will Keep Pressing Spread of Democracy."

"What is the Spread of Democracy? Is it mayonnaise? Or butter? What happens when you press it? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

9/18/06, 9:49 p.m. (Link here)

How quaint: Hungarians riot over the news that a government lied to hang on to power in an election.

9/17/06, 4:00 p.m. (Link here)

A Georgia trailer park owner stands up for the Rights of Man:

Federal agents also swarmed into a trailer park operated by David Robinson. Illegal immigrants were handcuffed and taken away. Almost none have returned. Robinson bought an American flag and posted it by the pond out front — upside down, in protest.

"These people might not have American rights, but they've damn sure got human rights," Robinson said. "There ain't no reason to treat them like animals."

9/15/06, 8:07 p.m. (Link here)

Someone or other is engaging in a sneaky Internet and car-flyering campaign against our district's Supervisor, Chris Daly. Because many readers here aren't local I'll spare you the detail. But if you're interested, see the discussion in comments over here.

9/12/06, 3:39 p.m. (Link here)

I'm crosslinking to some comments I posted at Horizon earlier on a thing that strikes me as deeply strange: why has there been no noticeable objection to Mr. Bush declaring yesterday "Patriot Day," when we already have a Patriots' Day that celebrates the founding moment of the United States? Of course 9/11 needs to be formally, publicly mourned, but it would seem more decorous for our new ceremony of mourning to receive a label entirely its own -- one that doesn't muddle or compete with our older ceremony of celebration.

9/7/06, 12:49 p.m. (Link here)

Tin-eared moments in s'morning's SF Chron:

"Marketplace finds lesbians an attractive, but elusive, niche" (commas sic).

And then, from a legal aid guy who ought to know better:

"...Domestic violence is a crime not only against a woman but against children as well."

9/6/06, 10:44 a.m. (Link here)

It is bracing to read, consecutively, Martha Nussbaum's review of Catharine MacKinnon's Are Women Human? and coverage (e.g. this) of the girl recently rescued from criminal imprisonment in Austria. It suggests that what Austrians are correctly perceiving as a gross crime is not really so different from the kind of servitude under house arrest that quite a few people wrongly see as an acceptable life for a woman.

9/4/06, 7:17 p.m. (Link here)

Chops

Lucas Shoemaker and Bill Bennett will have perfection on their minds when they slip into their dress duds for Wednesday night's San Francisco Symphony gala opening. They've both spent the past few days getting their chops ready for the big night when the curtain rises on the San Francisco fall arts season, followed on Friday by the Opera's opulent opener.

Bennett, the Symphony's longtime principal oboist, has been working over the solo oboe and delicate woodwind ensemble passages in the second and third movements of Dvorák's Symphony No. 8 in G Minor, which the Symphony will serve up with Stravinsky's Violin Concerto played by Christian Tetzlaff, and Glinka's "Ruslan and Ludmila'' Overture.

Shoemaker, executive chef at McCall Associates, the San Francisco catering firm known for its mastery of timing in the delivery of gourmet grub to pre- and post-performance crowds, is getting his duck breasts and confit in order, as well as the 800 lamb chops and lamb rillettes, duets now soaking in olive oil and herbs, and the chocolate violin-topped tiramisus that will appear Wednesday in the big white tent behind Davies Hall.

9/1/06, 8:38 p.m. (Link here)

Gratitude from this corner to Ken Silverstein of Harper's for "The Bush Administration and Godwin's Law."

9/1/06, 12:17 p.m. (Link here)

Your Tax Dollars At Work Insulting Your Neighbors

Yesterday's Federal Register announced the award of a grant without competition -- essentially a no-bid contract -- for $96,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support a study on "Gendered Parenting and Its Implications for Child Well-Being and Couple Relationships" by a group called the Institute for American Values.

The group's Web site at first glance seems full of inclusiveness and warmth and Open-Minded Dialogue, but my eyebrows began to rise with the discovery that the group appears to take pride in criticism from the feminist Katha Pollitt and praise from the censorious radio personality "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger.

Read deeper into the site and it turns out these people are dedicated to a hypertraditional idea of marriage at all costs -- one biological mother, one biological father, no divorce, no same-sex parents, apparently not even caregiving friends of the family -- none of the lively variation that has always existed in real human households whether labeled as irregular or not. They observe that divorce hurts children, as though happy marriage were the alternative. They fail to observe that unhappy marriages also hurt children. They publish tracts against "the weakening of marriage." Their members publish articles in the likes of the Weekly Standard that carefully and almost politely denigrate not only gay parenthood, not only single motherhood, but even the broad (and thoroughly traditional, and savingly humane) possibility that a person not related by blood can become a de facto parent to a child.

A linked site (look on the main page: it's the fifth item under "Marriage") is called "The Happiest Wives," and it's not pseudo-Shakespeare, it's pseudo-science, publicizing supposed findings that "American wives, even wives who hold more feminist views about working women and the division of household tasks, are typically happier when their husband earns 68% or more of the household income," and "Wives who stay at home tend to be happier in their marriages than wives who work outside the home."

Yesterday's announcement from our own publicly employed public servants says: "The study is unique and relevant to [the Administration for Children and Families'] interest in increasing child well-being and supporting healthy marriage."

Healthy? If they're talking "healthy," why not talk about healthy children in general? Why not talk about healthy parents in general? Why project ill-health, whether it exists or not, onto the huge numbers of American women who dare to escape from nursery and kitchen and church into full human citizenship, and onto the many American children in single-parent or non-traditional households, who are not themselves particularly conscious of being unhappy or unhealthy or deficient? Marriage is part religious sacrament, part property transaction. What does it have to do with maintaining Health or providing Human Services? Why make the nation's non-traditional parents give their tax money to a group predisposed to insult them?

And just exactly how does a private group of activists for a narrow, crypto-fundamentalist definition of "family" become a no-bid public contractor?

8/31/06, 3:52 p.m. (Link here)

If the specific memory and meaning of the twentieth-century word "fascism" were successfully muddled into a generic synonym for "evil," who would benefit? Would we not, for example, be robbed of a word for the danger of allowing business and party political structures to acquire power in government?

7/18/06, 12:11 p.m. (Link here)

With all the hell in this week's news, a little advice from someone in Western Massachusetts:

7/13/06, 4:26 p.m. (Link here)

Strange de J. found a link explaining why the photo below reminds him of James Dean.

7/04/06, 10:30 p.m. (Link here)

Catblogging (photo by Strange de Joel):

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