Notes From The City

I. A sign of the times: along Geary Street, the glowing red sign of a Lamps Plus store is imperfectly illuminated, the 'am' flickering and buzzing, a short in the system.

II. Two country clubs within a couple of miles of each other on a dark night among winding, eucalyptus-lined streets is too much for any city, even if you do host throngs of ancient kilt-wearing Robert Burns fans. You can pretend to be an ancient community with venerable architecture, but it doesn't mean it's true. So shut the hell up, Burlingame.

III. The problem isn't so much Muni. It is too many people being in too much of a hurry crowding onto too small of buses or light rails. If you give yourself enough time, the system works well enough. Stop taking yourselves so seriously.

IV. Not exactly about the city, but about Cupertino, which is fairly close. I used to love to play Scrabble on Facebook on my Mac laptop, after forgiving Mattel for shutting down Scrabulous, which was subsequent to forgiving Scrabulous for clear copyright violations. But now, with recent updates, I can't play Scrabble on Facebook on my reliable Mac without updating to a new Adobe Flash Player version. The catch is that Adobe didn't release a version compatible with OS X 10.3, and you can't upgrade to a newer version of OS X without spending at least $130, according to my preliminary research. And you also can't download the new version of iTunes without upgrading to OS X 10.4. It may or may not be worth it.

Planned obsolescence eliminates any differences between Apple and Microsoft, I would say. Just different wardrobes. Both corporations with stockholders and profit-harvesting.

San Francisco

To drive across that copper-orange span, to pass beneath the famous towering arches, to see the sun lapping at the water at the mouth of the bay, stretching back to the horizon on an incredibly bright Saturday afternoon in January, is to realize that it doesn't matter if the world ends.

But I would prefer for it not to end.

Inauguration Day. Here's hoping the era it ushers in lives up to a quarter of the hype. At the very least, let it breed a newfound sense of engagement and hope.

Dreams for the next months: the chance to go to Baja to see the whales; run three times a week through the park as the days grow longer; see the butterflies for my birthday in Monterey and Big Sur; write every day, something close to the heart and not overly complicated.